One Step Closer
by Ssergit
Summary: Remus/Hermione. Two years after he disappeared from the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione had been just about to let go of her quest to find Remus Lupin. That is, until she finds that a well-meaning stranger is leaving hints that he is alive and well. Hermione knows him so well-how will she persuade a man so determined to be forgotten that he's worth remembering?
1. i have died every day waiting for you

**i. i have died every day waiting for you**

Hermione had never expected to love parenting. The fact that she'd never given birth to the sweet little boy she considered hers didn't even register now, two years after she'd taken over his care. Teddy was the product of love, after all, and if that love hadn't been between Hermione and his father, well, that was hardly his fault. She _had_ loved his father, first as a role model, then as a colleague of sorts, in the Order- and then, embarrassingly, wretchedly, as a man who would never be hers, a man married to someone else. She never said anything, because of _course_ she hadn't. Tonks was also a colleague, one who could have been a friend but for the way Hermione had kept herself coldly friendly and distant from the other witch. It wouldn't do for Tonks to ever realize Hermione's secret, especially because of the fragile nature of the relationship between Tonks and Lupin. He'd deserved to be happy, after all, and his repeated protestations of being too old for the Metamorphmagus had just driven home to Hermione exactly how rejected she'd have been had she ever attempted to tell him how she'd felt. The two of them had been happy, and she'd settled for that, focusing her energy on the war instead of her foolish emotional attachment.

But now they were gone. Even now, if she shut her eyes Hermione could still see Teddy's vibrant mother lying motionless on the floor, another irreplaceable casualty of that awful battle. She'd looked for Lupin then, selfishly, horribly needing to be the one to break it to him, feeling as though it _had_ to be her, the only other person on the planet who loved him anywhere near as much as Tonks had. She'd searched for hours, becoming more frantic as the minutes slid past, fingers rubbed raw from lifting rubble and scratching through piles of earth. Only Molly Weasley had managed to stop her, Ron and Harry's cajolery having fallen on deaf, numb ears.

"It's time to look after yourself, dear," Molly had said.

"Teddy needs him." Hermione hadn't even turned around, her wand supporting a large block of masonry while she shifted smaller, ragged pieces of rubble from around a man's leg. _I need him_ , she didn't say, even as she and another wizard she didn't bother to acknowledge dragged free the crushed body they'd liberated from the wreckage. It wasn't Lupin, she'd known that, but she'd had to be _sure_.

"Teddy doesn't need the lot of us so hurt and exhausted that there's no one fit to comfort him while he waits for his parents to never come home!" Molly had sobbed, reaching out with hands empty of her own lost child.

Her words had shocked sense back into Hermione, and despite her rush of indignation at the older witch's assumption that Lupin was dead, she had conceded the point and gone back to the Burrow with Molly. Besides his family, tiny little Teddy was most comfortable with Molly or herself, and babies were so perceptive. He'd know something was wrong if the adults he felt the most safe with weren't the ones with him. So she'd cleaned herself up and followed the tired, whiny cries that told her right where he would be. Tonks' mother was holding him to her chest, her face streaked with tears and her hands shaking against his little body. Their eyes met, and Hermione knew the older woman needed to grieve her own loss. Hermione had reached out, telling her in a choked, quiet voice how very sorry she was. Andromeda had placed the little boy in her arms, a visible relief washing over her as Teddy had nuzzled Hermione's shoulder and hiccupped, falling asleep right away.

"Your turn," Hermione had said. "Rest, if you can?"

Andromeda had looked directly into her eyes, and with a shaken, wretched voice she'd said, " _How?_ "

Edward Lupin had lost three members of his family that night. Andromeda Tonks had sunk into a hysterical misery at the loss of her daughter and son-in-law, unable to care for herself, much less an infant. Hermione had been declared the most stable, responsible person to care for Teddy, and she couldn't find it within herself to argue. She'd devoted herself to him, and in her spare time she spent all of her energy trying to find his father.

Days, weeks, then months of searching for Lupin had resulted in nothing but an unsubstantiated rumor that Fenrir Greyback had been seen dragging a man's body away in the midst of the chaos of the final battle. Hermione had done everything in her considerable power to find evidence of this, but all she'd come away with was a clump of fur and flesh clinging to a boulder at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. She'd even persuaded a Muggle friend of hers to DNA test a sample of it, but for all the foolish risk she'd taken to do so, the results had come back as an indeterminate mixture of human and animal blood.

So here she was, a single mother to the most precious little boy imaginable, a boy who had no idea that his adoptive mother was coming to the decision she'd never expected to- she was about to give up looking for Remus Lupin.

Hermione looked at the stacks of file folders, faded parchment, and ink-spotted pages in front of her and sighed. The wind whistled through the shutters outside, making her grateful that she'd remembered to cast a silencing charm at Teddy's windows tonight. It was cold, wet, and miserable outside, and Hermione felt a kinship to that misery as she started placing her research into Lupin's disappearance into a thick cardboard box. Her son had awakened early from his nap that day, climbing up onto her lap and grabbing at those precious pages with the confidence only two year-olds can have. He had clearly sensed her frustration was more than just a reaction to his special brand of chaos, and Hermione had told herself there was only one thing she'd ever keep from him if she could help it, and this wasn't it. It was time to put her obsession away and refocus on the living, breathing child of the man she'd failed to find. She wasn't planning to fail Lupin twice.

The pain of having no answers to mend her empty heart stilled her hands, and when she heard the sound of the rain double in intensity outside, she walked toward the front door and opened it. Hermione stopped only to slip her socks from her feet before she stepped outside into the cold night, heedless of the thick raindrops on her head or the way the cold seeped into her, ground up. Walking down from the porch and onto the lawn, she let her hands hang loose at her sides, tipped her head back, and wept.

Twenty minutes later, Hermione finally acknowledged that she was human enough to be chilled to the bone and in need of warming up, no matter how much punishment she wanted to inflict on herself for her failures. She rubbed her wrinkled fingers against her sodden shirtsleeves as she mounted the stairs toward the front door of her small house. There, resting on the Teddy-sized chair on the porch, was a package she was certain hadn't been there when they'd returned from food shopping that evening. Hermione pulled her wand from her trouser pocket with difficulty, casting a detection charm with a soft voice that shook with cold and concern. Surprisingly, the package endured the charm with a soft yellow glow that told Hermione that all was well within it.

Hermione bit her lip and looked around, but all she could see was rain and the shadows formed around her by the familiar trees and bushes surrounding her small cottage. Impulsively, Hermione decided that casting a protective charm around herself and the small alcove at the front of the house would be enough, and she lifted the package and took it inside.

It was heavy, but not overly so. The box was covered with brown paper and tied with rough twine that fell apart almost the second Hermione touched it. Before lifting the loose lid that covered the box's contents, Hermione searched for any note or indication of where it had come from, but there was nothing, not even faint impressions of quill marks on the packaging. When she lifted the lid off of the box, though, she drew a quick breath before reaching inside to lift its contents with hands that trembled.

It was a trenchcoat, worn with use and thin from age. Hermione didn't even need to shake it out fully to know whose it was. She could smell the familiar tang of wool with an undertone of chocolate and pine needles. It was Remus Lupin's coat; she recognized it as the one he'd been wearing the last day she'd seen him. She'd searched all across Hogwarts' grounds for any glimpse of that coat, as rumpled and dirty and covered in blood as she herself had been. This coat, with its recognizable scent and well-worn collar, though- this coat was clean. In anxious disbelief, Hermione remembered something and hastily laid out the garment on the boot-bench, running her hands lightly along the bottom seam until, _yes, there_. Right where the coat had a natural break in the fabric, the seam had unraveled a bit as though it had caught on something. The something had been the railing of #12 Grimmauld Place, when Sirius as Padfoot had pushed past Remus in a rush to head inside for whatever reason. Hermione had promised Lupin she would fix the hem when she'd seen it happen, but he'd brushed her off, noting that it would hardly be noticed, so shabby was the rest of his clothing.

That meant this coat was his, _really his_ , and someone had left it on her doorstep with no indication as to why. _It would be one thing,_ Hermione thought as she lowered her protective wards and carried the trench coat carefully in to sit inside with it, _if it were dirty and bloody and ripped, but this, this is well cared-for. Is Remus out there somewhere, cared for?_

An ember of faith flared back up inside her, buried as it was in the very depths of her heart.

* * *

Morning came, and with it a break in the weather. Hermione had hung the coat against the back of her room door where the first sunlight of the day hit it, shining on a neat seam along the top of the right sleeve. _Someone repaired this_ , she realized, the knowledge chasing all remnants of sleep from her. Hermione allowed herself a minute to picture Remus, needle in hand sitting in a dingy room Merlin knew where, sewing a rip in his own sleeve until she shook her head and got up, roughly shoving her feet into her slippers. No, Remus would not have carefully boxed up his old coat to give his son after two years of absence, and Remus would not have managed these straight, tiny stitches, either. Someone else was doing this, sending her a message that somehow, impossibly, he was alive and well.

Strangely, this was more comforting to her than if it _had_ been Remus to leave the package. It meant someone was meddling, pushing. If left to himself, Lupin probably would never have revealed himself, she guessed. This unknown benefactor represented hope. A strange sort of calm filled her as she dressed for the day. Hermione decided she would talk over this new development with her friends that evening at the Burrow, as long as it wouldn't upset Harry on his birthday, that was.

"Mummyyyyyyy" called a muffled voice from Teddy's room. Hermione hurried to the hallway, wandlessly opening his door and peeking her head in to grin at him. At first it looked as though there wasn't anyone in the room, but then the pile of blankets and pillows by the window shook and giggled. Hermione swooped in, lifted up a rectangular pillow, and hugged it, patting it fondly on the 'head.'

"Good morning, my Teddy!" she said sweetly. "Time to get dressed!" There were more giggles from the comforter pile. "Would you like to wear green today?" Without waiting for an answer, Hermione opened a drawer and pulled out a green t-shirt and a pair of soft brown shorts. She sat on the rocker and started pulling them onto the pillow.

"Yes, tanks Mummy," said the pile of blankets.

"Splendid. And did you want to visit Grammy Weasley today?"

"Shoes no fit!" Teddy said, peeking at her.

"Oh, it's nice and warm after the rain, Teddy, we can just bring along your shoes," Hermione said, studiously ignoring the real Teddy in favor of the fake one in her lap. There was silence for a long moment before Teddy uncovered his head to grin at her.

"My goodness!" Hermione said, setting down fake Teddy and reaching over to lift up the real one. "This giant pillow has no pillowcase!"

"Green one! Green one!" Teddy crowed.

"Green for certain," Hermione said, quickly grabbing a separate green outfit and whipping out a large green pillowcase. She carried Teddy under her arm as though he were a sack of potatoes, slipping on her shoes and snagging her beaded bag to tuck into the larger changing bag. Teddy's non-pillowcase outfit and a pair of his shoes went in next. Without warning she whipped out the green pillowcase and began tucking Teddy into it, schooling her face into bemused exasperation at how difficult it was to clothe the giggling 'pillow.' Once Teddy was more or less pillowcased, Hermione grabbed a handful of Floo powder and they were stepping out of the fireplace at the Burrow not long afterwards.

"Oh lovely, I was hoping you'd come early," Molly Weasley said, coming into the room to greet them.

"Maybe not _quite_ this early," Hermione guessed, but she set Teddy the Pillow down on the sofa to kiss Molly on the cheek. "I thought maybe we could help with birthday preparations?" As Molly's face lit up, Ginny stepped through the fireplace and immediately went over to the sofa.

"What's this, a new pillow?" she said, sitting down and stretching out her head on Teddy's belly, shaking from side to side to tickle him with her hair.

"Oh that old thing?" Hermione teased. "Much too lumpy if you ask me!"

"-and hungry," Ginny added, turning to rest her ear against Teddy's growling belly.

"Now the real reason comes out!" Molly said, hands at her hips. A few guilty looks from Hermione and a stack of hastily-made pancakes later, Teddy the Pillow was happy, sticky, and turned back into a Real Boy, ready to head outside to play. Hermione and Ginny followed him, transfiguring themselves some chairs to sit and shuck ears of corn for the dinner that evening. Muggle shucking trumped the frankly awful spell for corn shucking.

"Ginny, the strangest thing happened last night," Hermione said, unconsciously playing with the fake wedding ring she always wore on her left hand.

"You fell asleep without worrying about something?" Ginny teased lightly. Hermione conceded the point with a rueful eye-roll.

"I'm serious though, I found a package on the porch, and Ginny-"

"You mean you destroyed a dangerous, unwanted item and need my help to discover which previously undiscovered Death Eater needs us to track him down and lock him away?" Ginny said, sitting straight up, a hard edge to her voice.

Hermione glanced over at Teddy quickly, but the blue-haired boy was lying on his back talking to the fuzzy caterpillar on his knee.

"I don't think a Death Eater sent me Remus Lupin's old coat," Hermione said in a low voice.

"Oh!" Ginny exclaimed, covering her mouth in excitement but clearly very aware of Teddy innocently playing so near to them.

"It was… oh _Ginny_ , it was clean, freshly washed- freshly _worn_ , I'm sure of it," Hermione said with a catch in her voice. Her friend had been more perceptive than Ron or Harry had when it came to how attached Hermione had been to Remus. "And I just know that he wouldn't have left it, I mean, oh, I should just get it and show you," Hermione said all in a rush.

"Go on, it's not like we have another thirty ears to clean," Ginny said, looking only half serious. "Honestly though, maybe we can figure out something in time for Harry's party. I'll keep an eye on Newt over here." She nodded over at Teddy who somehow now had three fuzzy caterpillars on his legs. Hermione felt the familiar surge of love for the little boy as she looked at him, seeming ridiculously comfortable with both legs pointed skyward whilst populated with caterpillars.

"Thanks, Gin. I'll be right back with it," Hermione said, grabbing a basket of finished corn cobs and rushing into the house before her friend could complain about her taking all the credit for their shared work.


	2. all of my doubt goes away somehow

**ii. all of my doubt goes away somehow**

Hermione stepped through the fireplace and rushed to her bedroom, stepping inside and shutting the door. The coat was still there, although _that_ was something Hermione wasn't going to allow herself admit having worried about. Something had happened, someone had given her this tangible link to Remus. Hermione had to settle her heartbeat, had to acclimatize herself to the object enough that she'd be able to carry it to a place where other people would see her with it. They'd figure out how she felt, they'd _know_ , she was sure of it.

Hermione always had been able to rationalize anything to herself, and this was no exception.

She reached up and released the trench coat from its hanger and carried it into the living room. It felt heavy with the hopes she'd imbued it with, and she lifted the garment to her face, allowing herself this indulgence for a few precious minutes. She could smell him on it- not just the everyday scent of a person's laundry, but the scent of wearing and _living_ in something more recently than two years ago. In the time since he'd disappeared she'd expected her feelings to fade, to evolve into something milder, more chaste, but it was all still there with renewed intensity. Futile desire unaltered by time or logic thickened her throat and misted her eyes over. Hermione turned to lift her face toward the window in her favorite spot in the room, the place she loved to stand and bask in the morning sunshine. She stood perfectly still, eyes closed as she hugged Remus's coat and allowed herself to take a few calming breaths in preparation for showing it to her friends.

She could feel the brightness of the sun on her eyelids- and she felt the loss of it for a brief flicker, as though something had passed between the sun and her window. Hermione opened her eyes, and while she didn't see anything, she heard footsteps. She rushed over to the window in enough time to see the figure of a woman walk quickly behind a large tree. She couldn't have heard it, but Hermione swore she could feel the pop of Apparition.

* * *

Hermione brought the coat tucked in its box back to the Burrow, but Molly put them to work with all manner of party preparations, so she sat it in a corner under Teddy's pillowcase. Once their friends and fellow Order members started arriving, Hermione threw herself into socializing with them. She wasn't much for parties, but this was like an intense little reunion, with mostly happy news from everyone since they'd last met. New jobs, relationships, and magical accomplishments filled their conversation with back pats and congratulations. Harry let his godson help blow out his birthday candles, but it was the present-opening Teddy was most delighted with. He kept everyone amused by changing his hair color to match the ribbons on Harry's gifts, and to Hermione's great pride, he'd also managed to curb his toddler tendency for greediness. She'd worried that Harry would confuse the boy if he kept Teddy with him while opening things, but Teddy had a natural joy in generosity that reminded her of Remus. It didn't need to be a gift for _him_ to make him happy; seeing Harry pleased with something was enough, even at two years old.

Thinking of Remus made Hermione hold Teddy a little closer before laying him down to sleep in Ron's old room. Teddy had stayed there often enough that he fell asleep right away, leaving Hermione grateful and nervous at the same time. Downstairs, most of the older generation of Witches and Wizards were saying their goodbyes to the birthday boy, and most likely by the time she came back to the table there would be just their core group of DA members left. The years of searching for Remus had taken their toll on those friendships, even if her friends had tried to hide it. She supposed she did understand, _they'd_ lost siblings, lovers, a godparent- all relationships closer than hers to Lupin. Her crusade had been well camouflaged by her guardianship of Teddy, but Hermione was perceptive, she could tell when her friends were uncomfortable. She'd pulled back into herself, taking her updates and conjectures with her, despite how painful it was for her. The resulting relief she'd seen in her friends had added another layer of distance. Now that she was about to rock the flimsy foundation she'd rebuilt, she wasn't sure it was worth it.

She took a deep breath, shut her eyes, and stood up to leave the room and let Teddy sleep in peace. Hermione turned toward the door and saw Ginny standing there looking fondly at her. Hermione walked quietly to the door and opened her mouth to tell Ginny she'd changed her mind about their proposed conversation.

"Nope," Ginny said, making a popping noise at the end of the word. She tucked her hand into Hermione's arm and tugged her toward the stairs.

"How did you know that I decided to-" Hermione whispered. She was silenced with a look. "I just think-" Hermione started, but Ginny interrupted her immediately as she reached out to pull Teddy's door gently closed.

"We could hear you thinking from downstairs."

"I'm sure everyone's sick of hearing about-" Hermione said, only to be interrupted again, this time by Harry.

"Nope," he said, rounding the corner to greet them from the base of the stairs. He popped his 'p' in the same way as Ginny, and Hermione grinned despite herself. She allowed herself to be pulled into the brightly lit, cheerful living room with Ron, George, Neville, and Luna there waiting for her.

It turned out Ginny had done the hard work for her, intuitively guessing that Hermione was concerned about bringing her quest back to the forefront of conversation. When everyone was settled and looking at her expectantly, her worries were put to rest when Harry broke the silence.

"Ginny says you might have a lead," he said, leading toward him as he balanced at the edge of his seat. A quick glance around the room showed similar attitudes; no one looked like they were experiencing the internal eye-roll Hermione had sensed so often in the past year.

"Someone, well. Someone sent me this," Hermione said, stepping quickly over to the mysterious box and pulling out its contents. "It's his, and it's... well, look at it."

"Clean," Luna said.

"Not fresh out of that battle, that's for certain," Neville agreed.

"Right?" Ginny said.

"But maybe someone just, I dunno, found it and washed it and figured out where Teddy lives," Harry said, looking doubtful.

"He's worn it since, I'm sure of it," Hermione said. She paused for a second, then spoke again, rushing through the words. "It smells like him. H-he's out there somewhere, and someone's done his laundry, and I just know _he_ didn't leave that for us, but _someone_ did."

"I like thinking that he's made friends with someone who knows better than to let him stay away," Luna mused. "He always did think he was too dangerous for friends."

"He was wrong," Harry said, emphatically.

"Wait," Hermione said thoughtfully. "If he _is_ somewhere where he's taking proper care of his clothes, a place that's not a… a _den_ ," she said, shuddering, "then we can make some conclusions about that, right?" She started looking in Teddy's changing bag for a quill, grinning at Ginny when she looked back up to find a notebook being handed over by the other witch. "Right. So if someone's able to send us this, there's shelter and food, don't you think?"

"Makes sense," Ron said.

"Not only that, but, you didn't live at the cottage before everything," Ginny waved her hands around as though to convey many complicated things; "happened, so to find you and Teddy, whoever this is would have to be _told_ about you, yeah?"

"Brilliant, Ginny," Harry said, rubbing her shoulder.

"Oh. _Oh_. Of course!" Hermione felt a little overwhelmed at that. Remus would know (or at the very least, soon find out) about her caring for Teddy. Somehow, everyone else knowing this, and even possibly guessing that she might have other motives for doing it, was far enough removed from the man himself that it didn't phase her, but the very real possibility of him already knowing launched a half-dozen butterflies into her stomach.

The butterflies were stomped to death at her next thought.

"Someone connected to Remus knows where Teddy is, we can agree on that, right?" Hermione said in a pinched voice. "We also agree that he wouldn't have left us his coat."

"Stubborn git, he wasn't going to say anything, was he?" Harry said, catching her implications and voicing them, hands curling into fists on his lap.

"And wherever he is, he thinks he's better off without us!" Ron said, standing up in indignation.

"Worse," George quietly spoke for the first time. "That _we're_ better off without _him_."

* * *

The rest of the conversation had ebbed and flowed with emotion, concluding with Harry promising to once again check into what the Ministry knew of Fenrir Greyback, something he'd done a few times the previous year after Hermione had annoyed and finally exhausted her contacts there. At last word, the dark werewolf had retreated far into the wilderness with the remains of his tattered pack, content to lick their wounds and keep out of sight. Hermione had chosen to sit and listen to her friends chat after they'd concluded their Lupin conversation, setting aside her quill and parchment and simply sitting with his coat folded in her lap. She'd rested her hands inside the folds, twisting her faux wedding ring around her finger until the cascades of yawns sent everyone home to their own beds.

"Stay?" Ginny said, the tangle of her hands in Harry's making it a mixed message. "Or," she added, noting the hesitation on Hermione's face, "you could head back, Teddy will be fine, and you can come straight away in the morning?"

Ordinarily, Hermione wouldn't have agreed, but as she pulled her hands from the warmth of Remus's coat and stretched, she scrubbed them over her face and smelled Remus on them, ever so slightly. The thought of trying to drag Teddy from sleep with hands that smelled of his father was too much for her fragile heart just then. She nodded at Ginny, gathered up her things from Teddy's changing bag in case it would be needed before she came back (she hoped not!), and Apparated home, too sleepy to bother with the floo.

Harry had begged her to set up serious wards and protections about the house, assuming probably rightly that whoever was associated with Lupin now may have at the very least been associated with werewolves, and possibly even Death Eaters. Hermione had already been using one of the powerful protective wards she knew of, but tonight, instead of looking to lock down her cottage with a powerful Keep Out message, she realized she wanted to do just the opposite. Impulsively, she sat at her desk with quill and parchment and wrote a message quickly, grabbing the spellotape and fixing it to her door before she lost her nerve. Then she cast a timed sleeping spell on herself and lay down, bothering only to toe off her shoes for the sake of comfort.

 **ANY FRIEND OF REMUS LUPIN IS A WELCOME FRIEND OF OURS  
PLEASE COME BACK FOR TEA ON 4TH AUGUST**

* * *

 **Tuesday**  
There wasn't any change to the parchment on the 1st. This was perfectly reasonable, considering it had only been up for less than 24 hours, and Hermione's impatiently bitten fingernails had been too long and in need of a trim in any case. No one expected the hands of a single mother of a three year-old boy to be _perfect_ , surely.

 **Wednesday**  
By midday on the 2nd, there was still no change. "Fingernail biting is a very bad habit," Hermione reminded herself and Teddy. That afternoon, they went shopping for the ingredients for double chocolate biscuits, Teddy (and Remus's) favorite. That night, Hermione went to check the front door and stopped herself so many times after dinner and before bedtime that she almost set up a mirror on the column on the porch so she could check without opening the door. As soon as Teddy was down (and had stayed down) for the night, she'd walked to the door, opened it, and checked. There under the text of her invitation was a reply!

 _Lovely! Will be there at half six, thanks!_

 **Thursday**  
Hermione loved baking with Teddy, unless she was currently baking with Teddy. It was adorable, messy, frustrating, and priceless, so she tried to do it often enough that he got to enjoy the novelty, and infrequently enough to keep her sanity. Once everything was cleaned and put away, and the misshapen and broken baked goods were properly 'tested' and disposed of in their bellies, Hermione kissed her sweet boy goodnight. Her excitement and anticipation were off the charts, but she had one more surprise to come. She found it when she went to remove the parchment from her front door.

Spellotaped to her invitation was a folded letter.

 _Hermione,  
Please forgive my intrusion, firstly! I hope your reactions will be more pleasant than our mutual friend's have been, as I am sure you already suspected. But I get ahead of myself._

 _My name is Arawa Farell. My brother is a werewolf. He was bitten when he was 17, in 1993 by Greyback, just as Remus was. For a long while we kept to ourselves, but this became impossible once Greyback decided to come for those he had sired, to force them into his service, and His service. Samiel wasn't strong enough to resist, but he stayed in the background, nondescript and ordinary, as we had promised each other. After the Battle of Hogwarts, Greyback drew back to a series of remote caves with his sires. They were allowed to lick their wounds, allowed to lay low, but not allowed to leave._

 _We think Greyback got bored and overconfident. He wanted more thralls. He chose poorly. He bit a young man from the area, I don't want to say his name- but, Hermione, he saved my brother and all the others! He fought Greyback and WON. I don't even know if this is known outside of the periphery of the pack, the family that stayed to try to help, like me._

 _This brings us to Remus. We have all been living in a makeshift village the pack family built. Some of the werewolves left with their loved ones immediately, but not everyone was strong enough to. We (the rest of the family) have all been working so hard to bring these men and women back to humanity, Hermione. Remus… he was very broken. It wasn't until last month we even knew he had family. Not everyone does, I get that. But the look on his face when he talked about his son! He says you're both -no. I'm not going to say those awful things, because I think it would hurt you to hear them and he is WRONG. He's not better off. You two are not better off._

 _He says his wife is dead. You clearly aren't. I can't pretend to understand why he tells himself these things, and I am sure you're already so very hurt by his absence… but I could see how much you still love him. I saw you in the window. I think you saw me, and I want to apologize, I never meant to pry on such a private moment! I just… he's a good man, Hermione. Everyone can see it but him._ _I know how very angry he would be if I told him I've come to you. He's a fool, a broken one. I want to help fix him, if you'll let me. I'm so very afraid he'll run away from you again, from his pack family, too._

 _So, there it is. I'll come by tomorrow. It's still over a week until the full moon, so I don't think he'll be able to smell that I've been to see you. I want to promise you, I will (and the other pack family members you'll hopefully meet soon) do everything I can to bring him back to you._

 _With hope,  
Ara_


	3. watching you stand alone

**iii. watching you stand alone**

When Hermione had first taken Teddy, the only place she could sleep was outside his door, leaning against it as though she could support the whole world at her back. She'd slept there for months, long enough that the thin layer of hardwood on the floor of that hallway had started to wear away. Teddy loved the rug she'd let him pick out for that doorway, and Hermione appreciated its softness now as she sat in her familiar spot, transfixed by the letter she'd read countless times in the past hour. She traced her fingers across the ink of Remus's name, then that of the letter writer.

The initial flush of embarrassment and shame was finally fading. _His wife!_ Hermione understood completely why Arawa would make that assumption, given what she'd seen. It was perfectly understandable, and utterly wrong. Still, something about the way the other witch had written so frankly about her brother and their pack family out there in the wilderness made Hermione inclined to trust her. Maybe it was as easy as explaining her fruitless crush?

Hermione groaned, stopping herself just in time from voicing it loudly enough to wake Teddy.

What had she been _thinking?_ Even if she could explain away her feelings to this woman, what in Merlin's name will she do when they persuaded Remus to come back? Teddy called her _Mummy_ , for goodness' sake! Hermione got up and walked over to her own doorway, burying her face in the corner like a punished child. The cold of the wallpaper felt soothing against her flaming cheeks. In all of her plans, her copious notes, maps, and lists, _how had she missed this?_ This would _always_ have been the outcome if she were to find him, wasn't it?

Stepping back, Hermione covered her face with her hands. Even this was unhelpful, as when she opened her eyes she saw the fake wedding band she wore. Mortified, she started to remove it, but she didn't have the moral strength to complete the action. It wouldn't matter to Remus that she'd worn it to protect Teddy from the wizards determined to 'rescue' the heroine who'd been one of the famed Golden Trio. Remus was a private person- the most private she'd ever known -and Teddy bore his last name, for Merlin's sake! Of course anyone who met them would assume she was his wife.

 _'Brightest witch of her age, my arse!_ ' she told herself harshly. _Selfish and thoughtless, more like_.

* * *

 **Friday**  
Hermione woke feeling brittle and hollow. She'd arranged for Molly to take Teddy for the day, as there was no way she was going to let Teddy stay for the coming conversation. The plan was to visit Weasley's Wizard Wheezes and have lunch with George, then spend the rest of the day playing with some of the other children from his magical preschool. Hermione had kissed him goodbye with a bright, fake smile and waved as he and Molly stepped into the fireplace.

As she ate her own lunch, Hermione thought about what she'd prepared for the day's tea with Arawa Farell. She'd set out a couple of photo books, one filled with pictures of baby and toddler Teddy, the other with pictures of herself and her friends. Scattered amongst them, precious and cherished, were pictures of a happy Lupin. Remus with Sirius, Remus surrounded by Weasleys at the Burrow, and in her most precious image, Remus alone, looking up at the Christmas tree at Grimmauld Place. She'd been trying to take pictures of both he and Sirius for an album for Harry for that Christmas. At the time she'd been so pleased to catch him in an apparent peaceful reverie. A few years later she'd found her duplicate copy of the photo, the original long-since given to Harry in the album he'd been so grateful to receive.

Looking at it then had been a gut-punch. The photograph might as well have been a movie playing in her heart at that moment. That was the instant she had realized she had fallen in love with him as a man, not just the idea of what a great professor was, or what a genuinely good person should be like. She'd known she was too young for anything to possibly happen between them, and truthfully, she was in some ways grateful for her attachment. She had been, after all, in the middle of a deathly serious mission, and brooding over some boy would have been a terrible distraction.

She'd expected it to fade. It hadn't.

Instead, her stubborn heart had fastened itself to him and never let go. It never wavered, not when she'd heard him protest to Sirius's cousin that he was too old for her, too poor, too dangerous for any kind of relationship. Hermione's steadfast regard flourished in the desert of his missions with other werewolves; her love thrived in the wake of his acquiescence to Nymphadora Tonks' love. Tonks made him happy, and perversely, this made Hermione pleased, even in her own misguided heartache. She'd attended Order meetings with them and no one guessed, not even Harry, how miserable she'd felt inside. It was her trial, her metaphorical cross to bear, and in an odd way the burden of it helped her focus on defeating Voldemort.

Hermione brushed her thumb against the picture, wishing as she always did that the animated Remus within would turn to look at her. He never did, of course, because Hermione had been the one holding the camera. She smiled ruefully and shut the album, setting it back on the coffee table and standing up. It was nearly six fifteen, time to prepare tea.

By the time Hermione had arranged the pastries on plates and tugged her favorite enchanted tea cozy onto the teapot, she heard someone at the door. Too late, Hermione realized she hadn't taken any time to prepare her appearance, but it was just as well. The man they were planning to talk about hadn't ever been concerned with what Hermione looked like, so why should Hermione worry about how she might reflect on him?

* * *

Arawa Farell was a short, fierce looking witch with deep blue eyes and black hair so dark it was almost blue. The look she gave Hermione was frankly appraising, and Hermione found as they introduced themselves that she liked the other witch immediately.

"Please come in," Hermione said, gesturing to the spread of tea and photo albums in her small living room. "I hope you won't be too disappointed that Teddy isn't here."

"I expected that," Arawa said. She walked over to the sofa and traced a finger along the cover of one of the albums.

Hermione had so much she wanted to say, and even more that she needed to say. All of it rushed to the surface, each sentiment and confession vying to be first.

"Am I right to guess this is full of Teddy's pictures?" Arawa asked gently. Her ability to sense Hermione's conflict and step carefully around it made Hermione understand how it was she'd managed to coax Lupin's secrets from him.

"Yes, thank you," Hermione said gratefully. "We can start with that." She and Arawa sat beside each other on the sofa and Hermione opened the album at the very end to hand to the other witch before readying some tea for the two of them. The tension started to seep away as Hermione explained the situation behind some of the animations playing out in front of them. With the turn of each page Teddy grew smaller, but no less intense in his interactions with the other people in the pictures. Hermione found herself telling Arawa about Teddy's godfather Harry and the madcap antics of the Weasleys.

Though she'd spent time putting the album together, she hadn't ever approached it in reverse before, and Hermione was surprised at the way the witches and wizards around Teddy in the photos grew more withdrawn and stressed as the images rewound to his birth only a month before the final battle with Voldemort. Experiencing it firsthand in the correct order had been vastly different; Hermione hadn't realized how tightly wound they'd all been until she saw the winding in reverse. All too soon they reached the first few pages and the revelation she'd been unable to bring herself to vocalize to the other witch when she'd first arrived.

Teddy with Tonks, sleeping in her arms with his signature blue hair, Remus's hand resting possessively on the boy's chest as he looked down at his wife and son.

Hermione let the moment sink in before speaking. "He wasn't lying, Arawa. His wife is dead." She roughly brushed away the tear hovering in the corner of her eye. "He probably doesn't even know who is caring for Teddy. I-" Hermione forced herself to make eye contact with Arawa, forced herself to feel the full brunt of her own self-recriminations. "I don't have anything to say for myself." Hermione said, finally.

"He doesn't know how you -?" Arawa trailed off, her face showing none of the judgment Hermione had been bracing herself for.

"No. Never did, hopefully never will," Hermione said, reaching out for a biscuit and the comfort of the chocolate she'd baked into it.

"Hermione," Arawa started to say, brows furrowed in such clear disagreement that Hermione immediately sought to interrupt her.

"I have _no right_ ," Hermione said. To her shock, Arawa stood up and glared at her.

"The _two of you!_ " she said, throwing her hands up in obvious frustration. "I know I'm a guest and we've scarcely known each other for more than twenty minutes, but..." Arawa walked over and pulled a stunned Hermione to her feet. "Having dealt with a stubbornly solitary Remus for these past two years and now _this_ from you!" she laughed. "Every single red blood cell in both of your bodies must be named either Guilt or Self-Sacrifice. You do know that human beings are social creatures, do you not? And yes," she said as Hermione opened her mouth to object. "I know you want to respond to that, and we'll get to that conversation eventually. I'm sure you have questions for me, now. Ask away." Oddly, Hermione didn't feel as affronted as she normally would have, with this stranger coming to her house and bossing her around. Instead, she just felt as though their affection for Remus had caused a kind of shorthand for sparking a trust between them.

Arawa was right, Hermione did have a lot she wanted to know, and the two of them settled back down to sit and talk. Hermione learned that Remus had indeed been dragged away from the battle by Greyback and that he'd been close to death from an infection contracted from self-neglect of his battle wounds. The alpha wolf's power had been diminished by the loss of Voldemort, and as a consequence Greyback hadn't objected to the tenacious little group of friends and family that had congregated near the caves he'd holed up in. It had been five months ago that Greyback had bitten a young farmer from the area, and three months since that strong young man had made the brave choice to fight for the dominance and control of their captive pack. The relief on Arawa's face was evident, and she told Hermione how her brother Samiel and the other downtrodden werewolves had slowly dragged themselves out from under the pall of effective slavery.

Some of the werewolves had been dispatched on terrible missions for Fenrir and Voldemort, and that core group and their loved ones were who made up the family pack Arawa had alluded to before. Hermione found out that Teddy was far from the first family member that the decisive young witch had tracked down, and that most of her self-proclaimed meddling had prompted happy reunions and reconciled families. This explained her confidence, for certain- but Hermione was equally certain that despite all evidence to the contrary, Arawa's formidable skills had been sorely tested by Remus's obstinacy.

"So you've known most of Greyback's former pack for years, then?" Hermione asked.

"Known of them, at least, most of them since around the Battle for Hogwarts," Arawa confirmed. "I'm guessing you're wondering whether I remember much about Remus from around that time? Hermione nodded. "He was… sick." she said, her eyes narrowing in deep recollection. "He had horrendous nightmares; lots of thrashing about in his sleep. Samiel was the one who brought me to him. We -the pack family I mean- we tried to stay away from the den for the most part," Arawa said, settling in Hermione's desk chair with her feet curled up beneath her. "But he was killing himself. I cast more body bind curses on that man than I care to admit, trying to get him to swallow healing potions!"

"I'm incredibly grateful, for Teddy's sake," Hermione said, adding, "and, all right, for mine," she added after catching Arawa's measured look. "The dedication you and the others had to stay around and help; it's inspiring." A thought occurred to her. "Would you like to see some pictures I have of him before the battle? Before he left us?"

"Oh, that would be great," Arawa said. "You know, I should have realized far earlier that he had family." At Hermione's quirked eyebrow, the other witch smiled sadly. "There were some werewolves there who you could tell had lost everything. They were broken, and their will was just _gone_. But Remus, he was a fighter. He'd just decided to fight _us_ instead of Greyback. Once he gave up fighting us, he fought any idea that he was worth anything to anybody." Arawa shook her head. "Thing was, it was almost like he was fighting himself about that. He'd throw himself into a project, like rebuilding a leaking roof-"

"I had an argument with him just like that!" Hermione said. "He'd decided he was going to save the world with us, with Harry, Ron, and I, and he just… it was like he'd devalued _everything_ else, including his own safety."

"Exactly!" Arawa said. "So pack family be damned, he'll fix the roof in a thunderstorm. Or stand up and fight against Greyback alongside a new, unproven alpha, for that matter."

"Baby and wife be damned, he'll risk dying to try to destroy Voldemort," Hermione said in a low, hurt voice. "Arawa, what are we going to do?"

"Call me Ara, Hermione. I consider you Pack Family now." Arawa said firmly. "I'll be honest: Remus is my pet project. The goodness in him just rolls off in waves, despite everything he does to pretend he's worthless and invisible. He's the only one left who I have hope can truly be saved," she said, her eyes shining with an unspoken hurt as she stood up and crossed her arms against her body. "Not that I won't keep trying with the others."

Hermione decided in that moment that she would well and truly become Pack Family: even if they couldn't rescue Remus, she would help Arawa and her brother and the rest of them try to redeem the lost werewolves they all loved. This wasn't SPEW, where she let her hopes and dreams lead her to knit socks and try to trick the house elves into being free. This was something that could actually make a difference. She looked over at Arawa, noting the mirrored determination in her eyes.

"So: how are we going to trick Remus Lupin into acknowledging he has someone to live for?" Hermione asked. She was unable to stop a blush from flaring up in her cheeks as Arawa corrected her.

"Some _ones._ " Arawa picked up the other photograph album and opened it to a random page at the very back. It was a wide picture of Harry, Remus, and Teddy. Teddy's tiny hand was gripping Harry's mouth and the two adults were laughing heartily.

"Not that I'm letting that stand," Hermione said primly, "but I just had an idea. Remus knows your habit is to track down family, yes?"

"Yes, one of the muggle-born werewolves calls me the 'phone book,'" Arawa said, laughing. When Hermione's eyes widened, Arawa cocked her head to the side in a silent question.

"He knew this _before_ he told you about Teddy?"

"Say, that's a great point!" Arawa said, clapping her hands together once. "That one fact makes this whole business seem far more hopeful than I initially thought!"

"Careful, you did say Remus is quite out of sorts, though," Hermione said, unwilling to allow herself to get too excited just yet. "He isn't thinking clearly, not if he's acting the daredevil. But it does mean that it's not farfetched that you would have looked for people he knew Before."

Hermione crossed the room to stand beside her desk, pulling a fresh, crisp parchment out and hunting for a new quill.

"We can draw on my celebrity, such as it is," Hermione said, rolling her eyes. "I mean, it's not a ridiculous idea that you might find out we used to be associated with each other, however loosely. You said he doesn't know who has Teddy?" She sat down to write, unwilling to allow herself to dwell on what to say for too long.

"I see what you're suggesting," Arawa said, flipping through more pages of the album. She tapped her finger on a picture of Harry, Ron, and Hermione. "I could 'find' you before 'finding' Teddy, and you could give me a message?"

"Exactly," Hermione said, finishing the few lines and signing it at the bottom. "For all he knows, I might as well be offering him my famous signature to sell for supplies, if he's not interested in anything I have actually written."

"And offering him something valuable without it costing you any effort will appeal to his stubborn resistance to charity," Arawa agreed.

"Or, he'll rip it up and run away again," Hermione said with a grimace.

"Oh, he can try," Arawa said with a dark sort of twinkle in her eye. "But it's too late. I already cast a permanently sticking locator charm on him."

"Not your first World Cup Match," Hermione said, using the wizarding world's version of the popular Muggle saying. "All right, take this before I lose my nerve." She handed Arawa a folded piece of parchment and a small parcel of chocolate biscuits she'd baked for him.

* * *

 _Professor Lupin,_

 _I have been contacted by someone who says you are alive. I won't pretend to understand your reasons for going into hiding. Instead, I'll tell you that the world seems like a safer place now that I know you are still in it._

 _I believe I can safely say that I know how to keep your secrets until they are necessarily revealed, so I hope you will trust me to do so._ _I can get ahold of a picture of Teddy, if you like? He's a dear._

 _Warmest Regards,  
Hermione_


	4. darling don't be afraid

**iv. darling don't be afraid**

Before Arawa left, she and Hermione exchanged addresses, as well as Muggle mailbox numbers just in case. Hermione made her promise to owl with a list of supplies the Pack Family needed, and at Ara's protests, she pointed out that with every new trusted friend came a network of loved ones with resources, and Hermione should be no different. In return, Ara made Hermione promise to bring the supplies to their little village herself. Just picturing herself doing this and seeing Remus's face turn pale with anger at her presumption made Hermione lightheaded. Arawa was as perceptive as Hermione had guessed, reaching out as they said their goodbyes and squeezing Hermione's shoulder.

" _None_ of this has been easy. Just picture your photo book in reverse," she said. "The farther from the trauma we get, the more alive we all become."

* * *

A week later, Hermione's laundry room was full of blankets, long-johns, 5 heavy metal buckets, a number of hot water bottles, and a whole host of other items that were donated from the Order of the Phoenix. Arawa had said they liked to stock up on cold weather supplies early, as the fall moons were fierce and took a lot out of them. Hermione had been very stern to everyone that while there was a chance this pack of humans and werewolves may have news of Lupin, it was just as likely they did not. She felt a pang of guilt about lying to them, but given the high number of Gryffindors among them, she couldn't risk any of them venturing to find him. This would be a difficult, frustrating, and possibly fruitless quest she had taken on, and for once, she wanted to be fully responsible for its success or failure.

Teddy had been given a mini skateboard by one of his classmates' parents, who like Hermione was Muggle-born. The blue-haired imp was currently delighting himself by sliding back and forth on a strip of paper that led from Hermione's room, through the hall, across the living room, all the way to the doorway to the kitchen. Hermione had attached crayons to his fingers, wrists, elbows, and toes with magic and rubber bands after garnering a promise from Teddy that he wouldn't put a crayon in his mouth, too. She'd placed a repelling charm on all the surrounding surfaces; Molly had given her a hand-written book with all manner of charms, spells, and magical remedies on her first Christmas with Teddy, and it was one of Hermione's most prized possessions.

"Mummy, look!"

Hermione looked up with a smile to see Teddy pointing at the front window, where an owl was pecking softly.

"Thanks, Ted," Hermione said, opening the door. It was from Ara. Hermione held the scroll in her hand and took a deep breath, grabbing an owl treat at the last minute to hand over. When she turned back to sit down, Teddy threw his arms around her, crayons pointing in all directions.

"I color the steet now, Mummy," Teddy said, holding up an arm and tugging a crayon free. Hermione set the precious scroll down and picked up her wand instead, and before too long had divested her son of all the crayons. He ran to his room to get his Muggle toy cars (so designated as they only had pull-back machinery inside, rather than charmed movement) to play on his 'street.' Hermione set her wand back down and watched him pick a section of paper and lay on his belly to start drawing a family of wizards on brooms to fly over the cars. She knew they were on brooms because each wobbly stick figure had a brown 'skirt' that led to a stick in each round squiggle 'hand.'

She could tell they were _wizards_ because they all had spiky black hair like his godfather.

Hermione unspooled the scroll only a small amount as she read, determined to prevent herself from reading ahead out of context.

* * *

 _Dear Hermione,_

 _You'll be so proud of me: I found a half-dozen things for Remus to do before I gave him your letter. He was so exhausted from clearing scrub, stripping bark from a log we're turning into a bench the Muggle way (for Brianna, who is, as she describes herself, a Were-Squib), and splitting it, among other things, that when I handed it over, he didn't have enough energy to do much more than stare at it, scratching at his chin._

 _I asked him if he needed to hex me, and he sat and thought about it for a while._

 _I asked him again at dinner, and he pulled the note out of his 'new' donated coat, wrinkled and a bit smudgy, as though he'd read it a fair few times. He was clearly struggling for what to say, so I told him I met you in person, not just with a message._

 _He asked where you lived, and if you worked for the Ministry, and if Harry was an Auror yet. I told him I would ask you. Before he went to bed, he picked up an old Daily Prophet we keep in a box by the door to the common building._

 _I haven't seen him read anything since I met him, much less a newspaper._

 _Take heart!  
Come with the donations in a few days? All the werewolves sleep the day after the full moon, so come on the 16th in the morning and you'll have no worries.  
Ara_

* * *

Wednesdays were Harry's day off from Auror training, and so he usually took Teddy on Wednesdays, starting after a shared breakfast between the three of them at #12 Grimmauld. Hermione was unsurprised to see Ginny leaving as the two of them arrived; she was dressed smartly for a publicity meeting with the Quidditch team she worked for. After a quick hug, Teddy and Hermione went inside and found Harry making pancakes. Half of them were even edible.

"Sprinkles are not a condiment," Hermione said twenty minutes and two pancakes later.

"House rules," Harry shrugged. Given whose house it was before Harry's, Hermione had to concede the point.

"So, do I look sufficiently nondescript, do you think?" Hermione asked him. She'd worn her hair braided and pinned as flat as was possible, along with a dull grey jumper and thick wool slacks. Even the boots she wore were simple and plain.

"It's not _cold_ in Wales in August, Hermione," Harry pointed out.

"Oh, all right," she said, transfiguring her top into an austere grey shirt with three-quarter length sleeves. "I just want to be inconspicuous, you know?"

"Dressing the same color as the full moon?" Harry said, mildly.

Hermione looked horrified.

"Say, Teddy, what color should Mummy wear to her appointment?" Harry said, clearly trying to reassure her.

"Teddy hair blue!" Teddy said, predictably.

"There you go," Harry said, lifting his wand and an eyebrow, asking for permission.

"Please," Hermione said in a shaky voice. "Honestly, I don't know what I was thinking."

"You were thinking, what color would fade into the grey clouds of Wales." Harry swished and flicked, and Hermione was wearing the same clothes, now in a few shades darker than sky blue.

"Compromise?" Hermione asked. "I'm rarely ever this… bright." She waved her own wand and her pants changed back to black. Another complicated movement and her shirt became sleeveless. Hermione pulled a thin black and grey cardigan from Teddy's changing bag and pulled it on.

Teddy pouted.

"Here," Hermione said, crouching down beside him and saying the spell one final time. The grey stripes changed to a gradient, 'Teddy hair blue' near her hair shading down to the grey at her waist. This earned her a syrup kiss.

"Thanks, sweetheart," Hermione said, scritching Teddy's scalp lightly. "I'm off, have fun with your godfather." She tidied away her breakfast dishes and walked with Harry through the narrow hallway to the door.

"I have absolutely nothing useful to say," Harry admitted.

"Just tell me this isn't the stupidest thing I've _ever done_ ," Hermione said, pulling out the picture of Teddy with Harry she'd brought with her to show Remus. "Tell me he isn't going to find out I was there and run so far and so fast we'll have been better not to have ever tried?"

"Hermione," Harry said, giving her a tight hug. "I'd tell you that, but I've already forgotten the first bit of what you said. I tried, but..." he flashed her a grin that sobered into a look of encouragement. "He needs us. He can pretend he doesn't, but locking himself up in an Azkaban of his own making won't change that."

As Hermione waved goodbye to Teddy and Apparated back to her cottage to gather up the donations, she chanted to herself. It was silly at first, but the more she spoke the phrase, the more powerful Harry's words felt, as encouragement and as a profound insight into Remus's state of mind.

" _Expecto Patronum._ "


	5. heart beats fast, colors and promises

**v. heart beats fast, colors and promises**

Hermione met Arawa in her own front yard, and once Arawa had greeted her warmly, she hefted a couple of sleeping bags into her arms and told Hermione she'd be right back with some other members of the Pack to help Apparate the rest of the donations to their home. Soon, two friendly but tired looking witches popped into existence beside Hermione. They nodded in greeting, and started packing two enormous duffle bags with the donated supplies. Before Hermione could offer to help, the bags were full, and the witches were gone. Hermione knew she couldn't possibly Apparate with them until she knew where they were going, and therefore she collected what little items were left in preparation for Ara's return. Her new friend would side-along Apparate to bring Hermione to the makeshift village for the first time.

"Bit of a change of plans," Arawa said, seconds after she re-appeared. "Turns out last night was just a fake full moon, so everyone's awake and ready to ask you a million questions the second we get there. You ready?"

"Ara!" Hermione knew Arawa was joking, but it was so close to her own anxiety-ridden worst case scenario that she couldn't help laughing at the absurdity of it. "Thank you," she told Ara, the amusement dropping away from her expression to be replaced by gratitude and affection.

"I may not be a werewolf myself, but even without their heightened senses I can tell you're a good egg," Arawa said, hugging her along her shoulder with one arm. Hermione picked up her load and Arawa grabbed the last of what was left, placed an arm back around her, and Apparated them both.

The little collection of houses where the Pack Family lived was as ramshackle as Hermione had expected, but what she hadn't been prepared for was the touches of care and love she found tucked here and there. There were barrels of flowers and herbs scattered everywhere, for example, and when Hermione asked why they weren't planted in the ground, Arawa told her that the werewolves in the Pack felt safer with the barrels.

"We can move them with us, if we need to leave, for one," Ara said, leading her into a wide, low building that was clearly a storehouse. "We haven't needed to for a while, though, thank Merlin."

Hermione suddenly understood the shabby collection of shelters a lot more. She hadn't realized that the Pack Family hadn't been staying at the _same_ location, all those years, but now it made a lot of sense. The Battle of Hogwarts had been years ago, and yet these lean-tos and particle-board cabins couldn't have been standing for longer than six months. Hermione tried to re-focus on what Arawa was saying now.

"For another, things in barrels are quickly moved out of the way. Have you ever seen a werewolf in a temper, Hermione?"

"Haven't had the chance," Hermione said, sliding a now-full basket full of blankets back into its place. "I'm sure I will, if he figures out I've come here." Hermione didn't use Remus's name for fear he'd somehow know, somehow hear it through all the thin walls and windows of the shelters here.

"Remus doesn't get angry. He gets quiet, withdrawn, and downright bitchy," Arawa said, leading Hermione back out of the storehouse. Hermione bit her lip at hearing Ara use Remus's name despite her own reticence, and Ara noticed. "I know, I shouldn't push you, I know you have good reason to be anxious."

Hermione nodded, looking around to smile at the few other people she could see working or walking among the buildings. She could tell by Arawa's body language that she was about to call some of them over to introduce Hermione. She recognized one witch as one of the two who had come to carry supplies, and when they made eye contact, the woman changed course and started walking toward Hermione. When she was three steps away, hand outstretched in greeting, a large rock - _too large to be thrown by a human, much too large_ , Hermione noted in the seconds before it struck- arced through the air and crashed into the other woman's head with a sickening crunch.

Hermione, Arawa, and the others nearby stared in horror as her body crumpled in front of them, two, three seconds stretching into a miniature eternity before the sounds of shouting, growling, and curses filled the air all around them.

* * *

Hermione woke fully bound, but without the crackle of magic surrounding the ropes that held her immobile. There was a blindfold notched into her eye sockets so tightly that she started feeling the headache pulse in mere seconds. With the knowledge of where she had been visiting and the casual cruelty of how tightly tied it was, Hermione decided it must have been fixed there by someone who didn't care much about humans. She felt the spark of anxiety that had spawned that morning flare into a bonfire inside of her, fuelled by her next conclusions.

Arawa had never told her that Fenrir Greyback had been _killed_ , just that he'd been defeated and replaced as the Alpha of his captive pack.

Hermione was a hero in the war against Voldemort. Her status as a member of the Golden Trio was one she often tried to ignore, but nevertheless she was a valuable symbol of his defeat.

She had put Arawa and the entire Pack Family in danger by coming to their camp. At least one person had died.

This entire calamity was _her fault._

Hermione told herself not to cry. It was, she told herself, important for many reasons, not the least of which because she couldn't tell what kind of fabric her blindfold was made up of, and some fabrics shrank when wet. She would _not_ cry. A voice from across the room from her tested her resolve immediately.

"Not so brave now, are you?" It was Fenrir. Hermione tried to shift her body to face him, despite the fact that her wand was certainly not anywhere within reach of even a wandless spell. "Shame you weren't to show up until after the full moon," he continued harshly. "I could have made my very own little puppet for the Ministry."

"You knew I was coming?" Hermione said, trying to inject as much of her very real fear into her voice as possible. It was clear that Fenrir didn't see her as an actual witch with the strength to outwit him or he wouldn't have left her able to speak. She wasn't called the smartest member of the dratted Golden Trio for nothing.

"Couldn't believe it when my boy told me he'd heard your name at dinner," Fenrir confirmed.

Hermione let her surprise show on her face.

" _Humans_. You think an Alpha gives up that easily?" Hermione heard him moving, then heard what sounded like a knocking sound on their side of the creaky door. "Don't think like animals, do you? You think that one defeat means the adversary has learned their lesson and gives up. Well the Dark Lord didn't, did he? Gotta use the defeats. Find your allies, note your enemies. See who's weak, won't pick a side."

She thought about what Arawa had said about the werewolves who were still living in the Pack Family, the ones who were the most broken. She wondered how many of them had stayed just to have access to food and a warm bed, instead of any desire to remain as close to other humans as possible. This thought led her to Remus, and she couldn't stop the whine of fear she let out as she pictured the worst- the werewolves who had fought against Fenrir being rounded up, the revenge the erstwhile Alpha might take out on them…

Fenrir laughed. It sounded like rocks dragging against each other, completely inhuman and feral.

Another knock sounded at the door, this time from the outside. She could hear it being opened, could hear the sounds of other people or creatures moving around in the room, and then she could hear a grunt and a person falling to the ground. With her body tightly bound and her knees drawn up to fasten her hands to her feet, Hermione couldn't have moved away even if she'd been able to see them being pushed toward her. As it was, whoever it was landed quite close to her knees, and she could feel their warmth through the ( _thankfully, Merlin!_ ) thick woolen trousers she was still wearing. She wondered if this person was also bound, if they were a werewolf or not.

"Tell me your plan, Lupin," Fenrir said. He laughed again, a hollow, awful sound, as on hearing Remus's name, Hermione had gasped. Greyback spoke again. "Did you know where I was? Was she coming to take me in?"

"I had no idea she was here," Remus said, his voice sounding gravelly and ill-used. "If I had, I'd-"

"Not run and told _me_ , that much I know," Fenrir interrupted, for which Hermione was grateful. There was only one way this entire situation could have been more painful, and that was to hear yet again what she'd heard in her nightmares for the past two years. That he had never any intention of coming back. That he'd have run, had he known she was anywhere near. That just the thought of _anyone_ in his son's influence being nearby was enough to send him away from the only semblance of family or friends he'd had in all that time.

"What are you going to do?" Remus asked. She could feel his tension; his leg or perhaps an arm was pressed against Hermione's knees.

"I'm going to leave the two of you in here until you forget we're listening to you. I'm going to lock the door until you pitiful _humans_ get frantic and hungry and desperate." Fenrir spoke a spell, and the crushing pain of the ropes around her loosened. "One of you is bound to turn all noble and self-sacrificing. Don't care which one of you it is." Hermione's blindfold was suddenly gone, and the lack of the previously constant pressure made her light-headed for a minute. She could hear the sounds of a large number of spells being cast, both in the small room and outside it, and recognized at least one as an anti-Apparition charm. She brought her hands around from behind her slowly, wincing as her muscles protested. She must have been tied up and unconscious for a long time.

"Make it last!" Fenrir said, and something long and solid but not heavy landed on Hermione's side. She tried to steady it against her, but her arm wasn't ready to cooperate with her instructions just yet, and she knocked it down the short distance to the floor she was still lying on. Hermione thought it might have been a loaf of bread.

The door slammed, and another litany of charms and curses warded it immobile and inviolate.

They were alone.

Hermione had never been a patient person. Right now, though, she felt as though patience was the easiest thing to be given her other options. Her body was finally starting to relax after having been roughed up and tied up for Merlin only knew how long, and her eyes had at last stopped throbbing from the unceasing pressure of the blindfold. Opening them seemed like a terrible idea, and not just because of how much it would hurt to adjust to the light in the room. Hermione's breath caught as she realized: Remus's werewolf senses would be at near full height, so soon after the full moon.

There was no way in hell she'd be able to hide her feelings for him. The only thing she could possibly do is mask them with as much _other_ strong emotion as she could. The strongest thing she felt right now, wasn't fear, though. It wasn't concern over how many others had been hurt by her foolish decision to come with Arawa to this desolate place in the middle of nowhere. It wasn't even the worry she felt over how Teddy was going to feel about her not coming back when she'd promised to. Hermione's strongest emotion right now was guilt. Guilt that she'd placed her desperate need to see Remus over the lives of everyone in the camp and everyone she'd left behind at home. And right up alongside it, insidiously, was her joy in knowing he was alive; living, breathing, and in a room with her.

Hermione thought she was the ultimate _shit_ human being right now.

"Your breathing sounds all right, are you in pain?" Remus asked, his voice still near enough that she was sure he hadn't gotten up yet.

"Physical pain, no," Hermione reported, her voice sounding higher even in her own ears. She cleared her throat and counted back from ten. Her pulse had jumped on hearing him speak, and she _would not_ allow herself to delight in his presence. Not now. "You?"

"It's not important," he said. This made her open her eyes, so she could see for herself the injuries his answer had implied.

Remus had been roughed up, just as her body felt she had. There was a nasty bruise over his eye, the swelling only just now beginning to distend the skin around it. He had a bloody smudge at one shoulder, and his trousers were ripped just below one knee. They looked wet at the rip, and Hermione could only imagine what the wound looked like underneath. She blinked a few times to banish the tears that had threatened, and then slowly pushed herself up into a sitting position.

"Ah, it _was_ bread, then," she commented, inanely.

"Shaleb made it," Remus said. He shifted his weight off of one hand and pressed it against his leg, fingers probing and coming away dry of blood.

"Did they hurt-" Hermione stopped speaking, the rush of words trying to leave her throat causing a lump of them to block breathing and speaking for a moment. "Were many of the family injured, did you see?" She still hadn't made eye contact.

"Ara got most of them out of there," Remus said. Hermione allowed a corner of her mouth to turn up in recognition of the nickname. "Most of the violence was against the wolves. So close to the full moon, we heal quickly. You needn't worry."

Before she could stop herself, Hermione let out a harsh, barking "Ha!" in response. "I most certainly _will_ worry, Remus Lupin," she said, her voice scratchy and foreign to her own ears.

She struggled to get up, her legs having fallen into tingles and pinches while bound and then immobile for so long. Out of the corner of her eye she could see him offering a hand to her, and cruelly (for her anger was entirely self-driven, with none to spare for him) she scoffed at it. It took a minute, but she got to her feet. Childishly, she resented him for remaining on the floor once she'd stood. She didn't want her disadvantage so neatly visualized. Hermione backed away from him, her arms so tightly crossed they might as well have been back inside the coils of rope.

"I have been the most-" her voice cracked, and she stopped immediately, taking a few seconds to breathe in deeply. " _Foolish_ and inconsiderate…" She was at a loss for words again.

"No need," Remus said from his cross-legged position on the floor. "I know all about self-recrimination." His voice was mild, but she knew him so well that she could hear the loathing in the timbre of his voice. It flipped a switch in her, thumbed on a circuit that lay unneeded and unused until just that instant.

"You don't get to do that," she said to him, stepping forward and pointing a finger. At her height, Remus seated on the floor was far closer than if they'd both been standing, and she took full advantage of it.

"Herm-"

"No, don't say my name. You don't say my name, you don't say Harry's name, you don't say" her voice broke, and now she didn't give a shit " _his_ name, you keep them all locked up wherever you stuffed us and you hold it in there however much it hurts you!"

Remus looked as though he'd been slapped in the face, and Hermione felt smug in an ugly, horrible way. He made as if to get up, and Hermione wanted to run over and… she wanted…

She wanted to run over and lift him up and hold her tear-wet hands to his face and tell him she was sorry, and to _please_ come back, _please_ fill back in the Lupin-shaped hole he'd ripped out in all of their lives. She wanted to kiss away all of the self-hatred he'd begun feeling even before he'd disappeared. She wanted him to know how much both she and Teddy loved him, the kind of love that meant it didn't matter what he'd done, as long as he'd be with them, now.

Instead, she turned her back on him and started to cry. It wasn't hard to keep her love for him twisted up and hidden inside all her other emotions, now. They were all interwoven into a knot so jumbled she was afraid she'd never be able to simply _love_ him again without feeling the betrayal and anger she'd finally after two long years let herself give voice to.

They stood in silence as the light faded through the cracks in the boarded-up windows. Hermione let herself cry, _really_ cry for the loss of him in ways she didn't even let herself do when she'd been alone in her own house with her room warded and the Floo locked down. He'd stayed away from her, and despite herself she was grateful for the intuitive, generous way Remus had always been able to tell how to interact with her and the others. Any comfort offered to Hermione in this moment would have been as much for him as it would be for her, and somehow, impossibly, he could tell that this would be the worst thing he could do.

Just as tiny shafts of light traveled across the wall and floor from the sunset outside, Hermione heard a catch in his breath. She didn't move; held herself as still as a statue and listened with all her strength.

Remus let out the smallest of gasps, and she could tell now that he'd begun to cry, too. She felt torn down the middle, as though her soul had formed its own grief horcrux of sorts, and the half that was ripped away had gone rogue, soaring across the forbidden stretches of the room to wrap itself around him in his misery.

Hermione didn't know whether she'd rather be a comforter or the judge that she was right now, standing as the immovable object to his unstoppable force. All she knew was that it felt like stepping back to reach for him was the hardest thing she'd ever done in her entire life, up to and including fighting Voldemort. She straightened her arm, reaching her hand behind her as vulnerable and exposed as the head of a man standing at the top of a trench in WWI, and waited.


	6. every breath, every hour has led to this

**vi. every breath, every hour has come to this**

He didn't take her hand.

Remus stepped forward, his breaths still uneven, and when he'd gotten close enough that she could feel his warmth through the back of her striped cardigan, he stopped for a long moment. Hermione let her outstretched hand fall limp at her side. Then, Remus rested his head on her shoulder. She could feel the damp heat of his tears within seconds, but she resisted touching him for a long moment. Her fingers itched to reach up and slide through his hair. It seemed impossible and yet perfectly logical that this was the closest she had _ever_ been to him.

Hermione tipped her head sideways into his. They stood like that for a long time, enough time for Hermione's desperate misery to give way for the awareness of how close he was, how similar their body positions were to those of actual lovers. She thought she could tell exactly the moment when he keyed in to the change in her. He took a deep breath, raised his head, and the slide of him against her as he lifted up and away felt like danger.

Remus took a deep breath to speak, and Hermione felt a wild terror that he would comment on what he had to sense she was feeling. To Hermione, her feelings for him had been kept secret for so long they were like a talisman. She spun around and clasped her hands together, both to keep herself from reaching for him and to beseech him not to give voice to what she was sure he'd figured out.

It was no use; he was determined to speak.

"Do you know, this is somehow the same _exact_ color of Teddy's hair, the last I saw it," Remus said instead. He lifted his hand and brushed it almost reverently against the brightest blue stripe of her sweater, right by her face. He sounded utterly wrecked.

"That's because it is," Hermione said. She didn't elaborate.

"Have you-" he stopped, and Hermione made eye contact with him as he struggled for a way to phrase the question. In her vindictive anger at his abandonment, she had completely failed to account for genetics. Miserable Remus and miserable Teddy looked nearly identical, and she loved them both fiercely. A tiny amount of grace slipped past her defenses.

"Yes, I've seen him," Hermione said. She saw the next question in his begging eyes, and couldn't help the maternal pride she felt at the idea of telling him even the smallest tidbit of information about his son. Her arms had been crossed when she started to speak about Teddy, but as she told Remus more, her body language uncurled. Her eyes lit up, her lips curved, and her fingers twitched as if she'd just finished ruffling the hair on his little head. Her love shone on her face.

" _Merlin,_ Hermione," Remus said, as though in awe. "He lives with you, doesn't he? You're-"

Too late, Hermione saw her mistake. Goosebumps shot up on her arms, her eyes grew wide, and her hand flew to her mouth to cover it as though she could cram everything she'd just said, everything she'd just _revealed_ back down her throat. She backed up, trying to get away from the look on his face, then with a groan of frustration she turned away, out of space and unable to face the look of _gratitude_ in his eyes.

She'd been one hundred percent prepared for him to be angry with her for any number of reasons, whether it was taking Teddy's rearing away from his biological family, subjecting Teddy to the vagaries of her being so well-known in their world, or even, if he'd somehow managed to suss out how she felt about him, selfishly taking his son as a way to greedily reach for any part of him for herself.

She'd never, ever imagined he'd be _grateful_.

"Hermione," Remus said, coming up behind her. "Thank you," he said, his voice thick with emotion.

"Don't," Hermione whispered. "Don't. I didn't take him because I wanted any _thanks_. I took him because-"

"You love him," Remus finished for her.

"- _so_ much," Hermione said with a sob. She rested her forehead against the wall in an unconscious mirroring of the way he'd rested his on her shoulder. "And don't worry, he's with Molly, and they know where I've gone, and I'm not going to say anything else because I'm not going to give that _asshole_ the satisfaction of knowing when he's going to be blasted into _scraps_ of _fur-"_

"You haven't changed," he observed, but, seemingly unwilling to allow that charged statement to settle in and begin other painful conversations, he spoke again, this time with a question in his voice. "Teddy's with his… what, grandmother, then?"

Hermione was so bewildered she turned her head against the wall to catch a glimpse of his face. "What? Oh," she said, realizing he meant Molly. " _Oh_. No. _Gods_ , no."

"Then who -?" Remus said, genuine confusion on his face.

The happiness that Hermione always felt when she thought of Teddy dissipated a little in favor of the hardness she'd felt earlier.

"It didn't bother you to leave Teddy with _no_ parents, before. Why would it be a problem if he's only got a single mother _now_?" Hermione stopped looking at him; she didn't want to see anything in his expression that might give an indication of what he might think of her as a single woman.

She heard him step away from her, and Hermione waited, heart pounding in anger and awareness, until he thrust something into her line of sight. A chunk of bread. Hysterical laughter bubbled up inside of her.

"Changing the subject, Remus?" she said, swiping the bread from his hand and turning around to lean insolently against the thin wall of their prison. "It must be killing you to have nowhere to run away from the hard questions," she pushed.

"So ask them, Hermione," Remus said, his breathing heavy. He stretched his arms wide, hands open and empty as he stood in the very center of the room. "Just don't expect me to avoid asking _you_ any of them, either."

"I-" Hermione had been about to say she didn't have anything to hide, but she _did_. But then, she thought, was her caring for him that much of a blemish on her character, come to this? It had prompted her to care for Teddy, who was undoubtedly the very best thing in her life. It caused her to look for Remus long after the other people who also cared for him had moved on with their lives. Her love for him was a part of her, and it was one of the _good_ parts.

"I don't have anything to hide," Hermione said, with renewed confidence.

"Oh, really," Remus said, his eyes narrowing. They both knew that she'd faltered for a reason, but she wasn't about to give him a hint as to what it could be.

"So why did you disappear?" Hermione asked, finally. His expression didn't change, and in response, she altered her question. " _After_ Fenrir dragged you away, that is?"

Remus stood tall and looked her in the eye. "I was afraid."

"Of a baby?" she scoffed, then added, "Though yes, okay, I can see that, a little." She smiled thinly, and so did he.

"I wanted what James had," Remus confessed. "I wanted to love Dora the way James had loved Lily; I wanted to be to Teddy what James wasn't able to be for Harry." His eyes were hunted, full of regret. "But I didn't love her like that. She was _perfect_ ," he said, shaking his head, "but not perfect for _me._ "

Hermione felt his anguish in the raw expression on his face. She understood what he meant, in a twisted way. He was baring it all to her, in a way she'd never asked for or expected, but was profoundly grateful for.

"Harry is so proud of James," Remus continued. "His parents sacrificed everything to keep him safe. When I saw that Dora had di-" he stopped, scrubbing his hand across his face. "I thought I had the chance to at _least_ do that, for Teddy. His valiant father and mother, dying to save the whole wizarding world, just like Lily and James."

"I can see that," Hermione said. She _could_ ; it made sense in the way that Harry's headlong duel with Voldemort had made sense, the way Neville wielding the Sword of Gryffindor made sense.

"Nothing has _ever_ been that simple in my life, though," Remus said, and while the words sounded like words of complaint, with everything Hermione knew about his life, the statement was just the honest truth. "Fenrir found me. I decided to kill him," Remus said simply.

"And when trying to get yourself killed in the attempt didn't work…" Hermione prodded. Remus shot her a look that was full of unexpected heat. She imagined it was actually a look of exasperation, but it threw her off-balance immediately, reminding her yet again that she didn't just love Remus, she _wanted_ him, too.

"I was very sick. His attack left me weak, and the wound became infected."

"So you refused treatment, and when that didn't work, you tried to work yourself to death, and when _that_ didn't work, you signed on to overthrow Fenrir as Alpha."

"You've really been paying attention, haven't you?" Remus said, looking at her the way he'd looked at Harry when he found out he'd had cast a corporeal Patronus.

"All things Arawa told me during our first face-to-face conversation." Hermione dismissed him with a shake of her head. "If you're going to say I pay attention, ask me about interviewing every single person who was on the grounds during the Battle of Hogwarts. Make fun of me for having the spot of fur I found there tested for your genetic fingerprint. Laugh at me for driving everyone batty with all the theories of what had happened to you, where you could be, and how we could save you," she said, passionately. "I was wrong about all of them. So much for being the so-called smart one."

Remus had leaned over slightly in the way he had that always made her think he was trying to look inconspicuous. He'd stuffed one hand into his pocket and was touching his lip with the other, thoughtfully. Hermione sighed, trying to think of anything except how attractive he looked when he was focused on something. She wasn't necessarily ashamed of her feelings, but she wasn't going to just flat out admit to them, either. How could she redirect his penetrating mind, though?

Then, Hermione had it. She rushed to speak, the sooner to turn his attention away from her and back to himself. "So, will you come back?"

"To what, live with you and Teddy?" he asked, his eyes veiled, face expressionless. Immediately, Hermione's face suffused with color, and her heartbeat sped up impossibly fast. Her ploy had backfired spectacularly.

"Th-that wasn't-" she stammered, knowing her behavior would confuse him without the proper context of what she'd been hiding, but not knowing how to stop herself from reacting or him from seeing her react. _The truth, Hermione,_ her inner analytical mind prompted. _Distract by speaking truth._ As she usually did when she was anxious, Hermione's fingers sought out her fake wedding band for comfort, but it wasn't there, as she'd removed it for this trip into werewolf territory. There was an indentation on her ring finger where it had rested for nearly two years, and suddenly Hermione knew what to do. She looked up and was startled to see Remus had started toward her, color high on his own cheeks as he looked at her quizzically.

"I should tell you," Hermione started to say, making a 'wait' gesture, and Remus stopped a foot away from her. "I, well. I'm somewhat of a public figure, however unwillingly. And no matter how much we avoided going out in public, we still had places to be, so to keep people like Rita Skeeter from asking why Hermione Granger suddenly had a son but no husband, I-"

Hermione lifted her left hand up for him to see, the pale strip of skin on her ring finger seeming to glow in the half-light. Again she had miscalculated, because instead of simply nodding in understanding, Remus came up to her and took her hand in his, rubbing his thumb against the groove where the ring usually sat. Hermione was light-headed; she felt like somehow every blood cell in her body had been called to her hand to record the sensation of his touch, leaving the rest of her body working on the smallest possible reserve.

"You let everyone who saw you and Teddy believe you were mine?" Remus looked stunned.

" _I-"_ she started to say _I have always been yours!_ but she was driven speechless by the way he looked at her: shocked, honored, _hopeful._ Had he really been so downtrodden that he thought no woman would ever look at him, even after Tonks had tried so hard to show him he was loveable? Remus opened his mouth to speak, and Hermione was simultaneously excited and _terrified_ to hear what he was about to say.

A flash of rich red energy penetrated the door at the far side of the room, rippling out from the center and shaking it apart in mere seconds. The shockwave pushed Remus into her, and instinctively she buried her face in his chest even as he pulled her close to shield her with his body. She was certain that they were about to be rescued, and that this wasn't an example of Fenrir's mercurial temperament choosing to suddenly destroy them. Just in case it wasn't rescue, though, Hermione released the handful of his shirt she was clutching and grabbed Remus's hand that was still tangled up with both of hers. She pulled his hand to her mouth, kissing it fervently.

"Thank you for being alive," she said, not looking at his face. Then she cast a wandless shield spell and walked out of the hole in the wall before Remus had a chance to realize what she was doing.


	7. time has brought your heart to me

**vii. time has brought your heart to me**

Hermione didn't remember how she got from the shattered doorway to the cabin to the fireplace at the Burrow, but she apparently did remember to send her Patronus to warn Molly that she was alive; very shaken, and minimally injured, but alive. She stumbled through and made a valiant attempt at walking upright before collapsing into Arthur's arms and being brought over to a sofa. They both tried to tell each other about their half of her ordeal before Molly came in like a whirlwind, flailing her hands everywhere and telling her husband that the details could wait, but Hermione's bumps and bruises would not.

As Molly fussed around her, handing over potions to drink and casting soothing charms on various areas she tutted over, Hermione tried to focus her thoughts. She'd seen someone who had told her that only two bodies had been left behind by the leader of the village (' _Arawa, thank Merlin,'_ Hermione had thought with relief). The Ministry had captured three werewolves with ties to the Death Eaters, one of which was Fenrir (Hermione had felt a dark happiness in knowing he'd been captured _alive_ ). Arthur told her that four werewolves had been rescued from bindings in the (' _not destroyed, YES!'_ ) storehouse, and when they had been told the other villagers had gone into hiding, they'd known right where to go.

Hermione had to assume Remus had gone with them.

She wanted to think over what had happened, to disassemble every expression and gesture, to look inside the curves of every letter of every word in every sentence, but first, she had to see Teddy. Hermione cast a silencing charm and peeked in to see him, loose-limbed and perfect, sleeping like a starfish, and somehow taking over the entire bed. Something clicked in place inside her; she wasn't done fixing things, but both of the people she loved most in the world were alive, safe, and somewhere she could find them again in short order.

When Molly got up just after the sunrise to start breakfast, she found Hermione curled up in the doorway of Teddy's room, her back against the closed door, sleeping soundly.

"What are you doing here?!" Arawa asked her, folding her into a fierce hug and spinning them both a little bit.

"You didn't think I would give up on the lot of you so easily, did you?" Hermione said, her hand unconsciously moving to a red smudge of rope-burn on her neck. "Pack Family, right?"

"Damn straight," Arawa said, and Hermione laughed at how the Muggle phrase seemed perfect for the black-haired witch.

Hermione joined in beside Arawa and the others in their manual tasks with all of her strength, just as she'd intended to do when she'd Apparated there after breakfast. Where ordinarily Hermione would be the one doing research or perhaps overseeing a group of fellow workers, today she just wanted to be one of many, a newbie at the bottom of the pecking order. Her hands became too dirty to pick up a piece of parchment without soiling it. Her back ached too much to reach for books on library shelves. Her clothes stretched and tore on unprotected corners, her hair was probably untamable even with the most generous application of Sleekeasy's Hair Potion, and at one point she realized she'd left her wand in her pocket unused for over three hours.

Hermione was exhausted, but she hadn't been this pleased with the result of her efforts in months.

She had warned Molly that she'd probably be gone for the entire day, but this time, she'd sent regular updates via Patronus. It was a relief not to picture Teddy, anxious and pale, waiting for her for hours with no word. It meant that she could relax (as far as her wrung out body could do) and learn more about the members of the Pack Family she'd adopted herself into. Hermione had gotten to meet Brianna, the self-dubbed 'were-squib' from Ara's letter, who was entirely hilarious and had stood and joked with her after delivering everyone's lunches. They'd all eaten wherever they were working, but by dinner, Wolf Hall, in the largest and most sturdy of the buildings, was finally tidied up and ready to house the whole Pack Family.

Ara wouldn't hear of Hermione helping to serve everyone (" _Sweetie, you're filthy beyond ten_ Scourgifys _and you don't know anyone well enough not to foul it up. Still love you, though._ "), so Hermione found an end of a table and sat down next to Brianna. Soon, the four long benches were filling up, leaving only a few spaces here and there, including one across from Hermione. She was turned away from the table and speaking with Brianna when that space finally filled in.

"-and I just had to think, if it weren't for Fred and George's shop, the poor teacher would have had no idea why Teddy had drawn a stick figure family of nine with so many of them ginger, while neither one of us has red hair!" Hermione told Brianna with a laugh. "I actually wonder if it's a similar dynamic- not everyone is related, but we're all sort of bound to each other thanks to the war."

Brianna nodded with a look of understanding, and Hermione turned to the table for her mug of water, surprised to find someone sitting in the formerly empty space. It was Remus, and they looked at each other for a long, warm moment, each assessing the other's well-being with a quick once-over.

"Oh!" Hermione said, remembering something very important she'd put up under her sweater: Teddy's picture with Harry. She pulled it out, grateful she'd thought to put an anti-wrinkle spell on it, and handed it over without ceremony. It was warm from being under her shirt, and when she gave it to Remus, she could feel how cold his hand was even without touching it directly.

Hermione blushed at the idea that Remus's cold hands would be warmed even slightly by something she'd held up against her skin for the past ten hours.

The animation of Photograph Teddy giggled and petted Photograph Harry's face, the sight so heartwarming and cheerful that she could tell Remus torn between joy to grief and everything in between. A tear tracked along the scar on his cheek and toppled off of the smile on his face, falling onto his sleeve to sink into the fabric and disappear. Unable to internally rein back her emotions, Hermione covered her mouth with her hand, physically chasing the tears away with a harsh bite of her lip. She broke the skin, a thread of blood blooming inside her mouth, and Remus looked up at her.

He stretched his right hand out for her and said, "Thank you." Instinctively, she reached out her left one and clasped his, his large hand covering her small one, thumb rubbing comfort along her knuckles. _Rubbing against the ring she wore there._

They both realized at the same time, and Hermione's stomach dropped. She tried to snatch her hand away but forgot his werewolf reflexes; he tightened his grip, holding her hand firmly in place. She could see him shake his head out of the corner of her eye as she looked at their joined hands in miserable horror.

"Don't," Remus said when she had tried to pull away again. "Hermione, look at me."

The rest of the room completely forgotten, Hermione looked up at him, pouring a thousand word apology into the look in her eyes.

"Keep it on?" he said, somehow turning the phrase into a command and a request all at once. "I _like_ \- I mean, I can tell it's comforting for-" he blushed, actually _blushed_ , his voice trailing off as everything he tried to say in explanation dug him deeper into embarrassment. All this, and he was still holding her hand.

Hermione looked down, and he squeezed their joined hands. It felt like a challenge, and her response rose to met it.

"I've always been happy to wear it, whether people thought it was yours or someone else's," she told him truthfully, though she wasn't brave enough to look at him when she said it. She squeezed his hand once, and tugged very gently. Remus let go but positioned his hand so that their hands slid across each other, palms to fingertips, before completely losing contact. Then he stood, lifting the photograph she'd given him to look at it for a long moment before tucking it underneath his jumper just as she had done.

The combination of his touch and then seeing something she'd had against her body being placed deliberately against his chest made Hermione feel like she'd drunk half a glass of firewhiskey in one go. Awareness flooded through her, and heat pooled low in her belly, the arousal so strong she felt a jolt of adrenaline, imagining every single werewolf in the room ( _including Remus -!_ ) looking around to see where the scent originated. Hermione watched his back as he moved through the room toward the door, scared that he'd stop, knowing that if he did she just might tell him everything.

Arawa came to find her once everyone was finished eating. The dry goods not used with dinner needed to be put back away in the newly clean and secure storehouse, and without prompting, Hermione lifted a half-full basket of pasta and asked Ara which direction to start walking. The look Ara gave her was one of surprise, and Hermione felt a twinge of frustration at the idea that her pitching in to help might be greeted each time with amazement and gratitude.

"Ara, has it been that long since someone new has come to help out?" she asked, trying and failing to keep her irritation from showing in her tone of voice.

"Truthfully?" Ara said, opening the door to the storehouse. "Yes. We've gotten a little insular, I guess. What usually happened was that Fenrir would drag in a new wolf, and if their family still cared at all, one or more of them would come by within a few months." She finished putting away their baskets and reached behind a large pallet to pull out a bar of chocolate, putting a finger in front of her lips to swear Hermione to secrecy. "We would then start the long process of slowly earning their trust, and half the time, the bleakness of the situation would drive them away. Most people have more than a handful of loved ones in the outside world, and it's just not that easy to give that up without the burden of lycanthropy."

"But from what I saw-" Hermione knew the Pack Family was down to only a fraction of what it had been, but there were more than twenty people there at dinner.

"The population fluctuates, some spend a season or two here, then home," Ara said, chewing her chocolate thoughtfully. "Even the werewolves don't always stay one hundred percent of the time. Samiel left yesterday for a few weeks, visiting our parents' grave and seeing a few of our closest friends in London." Hermione picked up the chocolate bar and handed Ara another square with a look of sympathy.

"I look forward to meeting him," she said, catching an odd reaction from Ara with her words. "All right, out with it," Hermione said, putting her hands on her hips and looking down at herself. "Is the dirt on my clothes making some sort of arcane magic pattern? Why do you seem so disconcerted by the thought of me sticking around?"

Arawa put her hands up in front of herself in a non-threatening gesture, and Hermione wondered how often she had had to do that for real in the past few years.

"Remember what I said about Remus being rather… surly?"

Hermione nodded.

"Everyone knows everyone else, here, and more importantly, we all know who is attached to whom. We get to know each other, habits, and the like," Arawa said, folding up the rest of the chocolate bar in its wrapper. "He's probably the last werewolf any of us thought would have someone here for them -because that's what he told us- and now that you are, well… no one has seen him really speaking to you. You were locked up together by _Fenrir_ , but there's virtually no change in his behavior since then."

"They're surprised he hasn't driven me away," Hermione realized.

"It's happened before, with other werewolves. They're unable or unwilling to allow their loved ones to see them laid low, so to speak."

"I'm genuinely happy to know he's alive," Hermione said. "But that's not why I'm here, at least not entirely. I would want to help you all whether someone I loved was here or not." She opened her mouth to say more, but Ara's attention was drawn to the doorway.

"Oh," Remus said, looking disconcerted. "I was just looking for the-"

Hermione held up the chocolate she'd been about to put away, and he nodded.

"I'm expecting an owl from Samiel," Ara said, reaching out to squeeze each of their shoulders in turn. "So: tomorrow?" she asked Hermione.

"I'll need to leave after lunch, if that's all right," Hermione confirmed. "Teddy-"

"Of course," Ara interrupted, smiling. "See you then." She slipped out the door and left Hermione and Remus alone in the storehouse. They stood still and silent for a minute, listening to Arawa calling out evening greetings to various members of the Pack Family. Finally, Remus offered Hermione a square of chocolate, and she realized she'd just been standing there doing nothing.

"Already had some, thank you," Hermione said, adopting the brisk tone that meant she was about to wrap up a conversation, even though this one had never begun in the first place. It was surreal to see him standing beside her as though he hadn't disappeared from the face of the earth to leave them all lost, grieving, and confused. Yelling at him in a confined space was one thing, but they were both free to come and go, here. How was she supposed to reconcile that with the reality of her son, who drew stick figure families full of men that weren't and never would be his father? His silence was uncomfortable, and she suspected he intended it to be.

"Maybe I'll see you tomorrow, then," Hermione said, turning to move past him to the door.

"You don't _have_ to- Just because you found me doesn't mean-"

"I can understand how the circumstances of your life have left you with a strange notion of what friendships are like," Hermione turned and said harshly, "but generally, 'because we have to' never even factors into it."

"Hermione, you didn't go to Hogwarts with me. You weren't an adult member of the Order-"

She didn't let him finish. "And we all _choose_ our friends, don't we. We look at a list and decide, 'My, this 'Remus' person is exactly the sort of fellow I'll cast my lot in with!'" Hermione blurted out.

"I'm saying that while I appreciate your sense of responsibility-"

"Your Hogwarts letter did not come with a list of First Years who could someday have the ability to become an Animagus, Remus! _Your friends_ did that, because they knew you were lonely during the full moon. Because they _loved_ you and didn't want you to suffer by yourself!"

Hermione reached out and grabbed the chocolate bar, crammed a square in her mouth, and thrust it back at him, though all she could see through the brimming tears in her eyes was a Remus-shaped outline.

"And despite everything they did, you just end up suffering somewhere, by yourself, over and over again." The years thinking Sirius had betrayed them. Losing Sirius, and doing missions with dark werewolves for the Order. Losing Tonks, and going off by himself.

Remus had stopped trying to argue with her and simply stood there. She couldn't see the look on his face, but she doubted anything showing in his expression could have stopped her, now.

"The people who love you aren't all dead, you know," Hermione told him, swiping at her eyes with the back of a hand.

She tried to pull herself together, knowing that Remus had chosen this scrappy collection of wizards, witches, and werewolves as his family, and she was loathe to give them a worse impression of him by making it appear as though he'd made her cry. She'd done that to herself; his silence was deafening.

"Look, I'll keep away from you, but I want to help, and I _can_ help," she said, the words coming out slightly nasally as she pinched the bridge of her nose to calm herself.

"I don't want you to stay away from me, Hermione," Remus said gently.

"You just want me to know I'm not contractually obligated to help my son's father have a safe place to live," Hermione retorted. Her vindictive anger prompted her to look up to see his reaction as she said this, and she could tell he was embarrassed by the way his eyes closed in what looked like pain when she mentioned Teddy. She nodded, unseen, and swept toward the door, wondering if she'd be able to stop herself from letting it slam.

Remus moved swiftly past her and his hand impacted the door, holding it firmly shut.

"Make up your _mind!_ " she shouted at him.

"I'm _trying_ to!" he hollered back, slamming his other hand against the door beside her head. They glared at each other, breathing heavily, and for a split second his gaze dropped to her lips before he pushed off from the surface of the wall and walked away. He ran his hand through his hair, and Hermione tried to tamp back the thrill of awareness she felt. Her legs felt heavy, as though the unfulfilled longing she'd learned to force away was seeping back into her from the ground up. Remus turned to face her.

"Have you ever ridden a motorcycle?" he asked her, his voice suddenly conversational. Hermione just stared at him, utterly confused. "It's exhilarating. Different than a broom, as you can feel the engine beneath you," he said, taking a step toward her. "It's also quite exposed. There you are, all that power driving you, but the faster you're going, the more dangerous a lean in either direction can be." He took another step, hands in front of him in parallel as he angled them just a bit to his right. "Sirius _loved_ it, even before he managed to charm it to fly," he chuckled, shaking his head.

"Of _course_ he did," Hermione said, some of the tension draining from her as she pictured it.

"He used to love parking it in a particular way," Remus said, tipping his head back as though reliving the memory. "He'd approach the pavement head-on when he knew he'd have to park beside it." Remus moved closer to her, his hands still illustrating his story by forming a T shape. "At the very last minute, he would haul his whole body -and mine, too, if I were sitting behind him on the bloody thing- sideways, and the whole contraption would skid along, somehow fitting _perfectly_ in the space up against the curb, with Sirius laughing as though he hadn't nearly splatted us all across the roadway!"

Hermione laughed, filled with joy both at the mental image he'd created for her and at the twinkle in his eyes upon remembering it. He stepped forward again, fairly close now, and his head tipped to the side as he spoke again, bringing to mind the way he'd looked in the classroom at Hogwarts: full of amusement, intensity, and an important message to pass on.

"You could never have looked at the position we were in just two minutes beforehand and figure we'd be where we had ended up," Remus said, locking eyes with her. "It was like we'd just magically slid into place."

Her eyes widened. It seemed obvious he had a double meaning, but Hermione's analytical mind rejected the idea out of hand. She shivered.

"How long, Hermione?" Remus asked, incredibly gently. There was no judgment on his face whatsoever. When she shook her head slightly, he rephrased himself. "How long, for you?"

This couldn't be borne, it was impossible. "You _can't_ mean-"

Remus closed his eyes. "Dora really was perfect. Feisty, generous, impulsive. Exactly the kind of person to bring me out of my shell," he said, pain etched across his face. "And she loved me. She was young, too young, but so was-" he stopped and looked over at her, eyes darker now. " _How long_?"

Hermione lost the ability to breathe. "As a teacher, since, well, since you were a teacher," she said, her mind scrabbling at the places she'd buried these particular truths inside her head. "Then as someone to admire-"

" _Hermione_."

"As a _man_ , the summer we left to search for Horcruxes," Hermione admitted, her heart twisting in her chest. "I never would have-"

"Neither would I," Remus said. "I was sure I just admired what you were doing, and the strength and intelligence with which you were doing it." He angled his body against a sturdy shelf across from her, body language loose, as though he'd shrugged off a heavy load. Hermione felt like she'd solved an Arithmancy equation but still had two unaccounted for variables.

"You're saying you-"

"Married Tonks. And loved her, after a fashion, truly," Remus said, looking regretful. "It felt like the right thing to do, to take care of her."

Hermione waited.

"I couldn't be what she wanted," Remus whispered. "She couldn't be what I wanted. She needed colorful, exuberant, for all that she claimed otherwise."

"And you?" she prompted, breaking through his sudden silence.

"I wanted pragmatic. Passionate." His gaze warmed her, even as she had a sobering thought.

"Remus," she said, straightening up to move toward him. "I'm going to say something, and then I'm going to do something, and then I'm going to leave, and I want you to think about all three actions in context with each other," she told him gravely.

He nodded, looking confused, but interested.

"I am in love with you," Hermione told him. "I've been in love with you for _years_ , and Gods only know how many times I had daydreams of standing here and telling you that." He opened his mouth to speak, and she stopped him with a gentle hand against his lips. "But as much as I want you, I _don't_ want your sense of duty blinded into compliance by the very idea of being wanted in the first place." He shifted in place, eyebrows coming together, his hands coming to hover at her sides, not touching, but only just. Hermione didn't want him to simply wait for her to finish so he could argue with her. She wanted his full attention, so she brought her other hand up to his face, cupping it with both hands. "I don't want the daydream, Remus. I want _you_ , scars and all. I'm an adult, now. I'm a mother," she reminded him. "Come and meet me, the real me, not just the girl you might have had an attraction to during the war. Come and meet your son. Let's take a trip on that motorcycle, not just park it."

Hermione pulled his head down toward her, sliding one hand around to tangle in his hair as she reached up to kiss him. At her first movement, he slid his hands around her back to pull her against him, so by the time their lips met, she felt like she was completely surrounded by him. She had just intended to brush her lips against his and, quite frankly, run away, but she hadn't counted on how intense it would feel. One touch wasn't enough; she pressed closer, and he turned his head to taste her, pulling her lower lip into his mouth. Her breath hitched in her chest, and he slid his hand from her back up into her hair, holding her still as he slid his tongue along the inside of her upper lip. She opened for him, and he groaned, the sound of it melting her resolve. She clutched at his shirt and pressed her hips against him, but the feeling of his very real arousal against her was what reminded her of her plan.

She slid the hand that was in his hair down along his neck as she gentled the kiss until they were just softly pressing and sucking against each other's lips. Somehow this was even more intimate than before. Hermione pulled away, smiled at him, and turned around. He'd looked as though he was going to argue, maybe even grab her arms to make her stay, but she knew that there were no anti-Apparition wards here.

"Goodbye, Remus," she said, and Apparated home, where Teddy was preparing for bed with Harry.

He couldn't follow her. He didn't know where she lived.


	8. I will love you for a thousand years

**Note:** if you see anything that looks like it shouldn't have been hyphenated, it's because FFN disallows M-dashes and I can't always catch them all to convert to a mis-used semicolon. It pisses me off so much! Argh!

 **viii. I have loved you for a thousand years**

Hermione did not like getting drunk. Correction: she liked getting drunk. She did not like _being_ drunk. She hated the way her mind worked as slow as molasses, stopping her from coming to conclusions while being too slow to stop her from making mistakes; _that_ was the very definition of hell for Hermione. The way she felt as she _started_ drinking, the buzz and the near-instant lack of caring about the consequences of her stupid decisions that day, though? That was what she had been looking for.

"Definitely the _stupidest_ witch of any age," Hermione told Harry. "He was right there. He looked _interested_!" She shook her head vigorously and had to put both hands out to steady herself. "But no, I had to go tell him to fuck off and fall in love with me _properly_."

Harry patted her on her back repeatedly until she swatted at him. He knew how to react to a drunken Hermione, as this was the fourth one he'd encountered, Hermione knew. He was just being a prat.

"He's going to stop being a ghost, though, and come back, eventually?" Harry asked her.

"Remus Lupin would be the worst Hogwarts ghost _ever_!" Hermione declared. "He'd probably follow right after Peeves and apologize to everyone and clean up after him. BORING."

Harry opened his mouth to try his question again, something Hermione was grateful for, even if she was pretty sure no matter what he said, she'd get distracted again. She was always distracted when she was drunk.

"-to see Teddy, eventually, I mean?"

Hermione put her head down on her lap and groaned. "I missed most of that thinking about how easily distracted I am. Harry, _thank you_ for never letting me get drunk at school."

"Hermione, I'm not sure I could have gotten you drunk at school even if it was a class assignment," Harry told her.

"That's what I mean, you're just the best friend ever. You'd never let me fall in love with you while you hared off getting almost dead and then _married_. And then actually dead, but not really." Hermione lifted her head back up from her lap and rubbed her eyes.

"Hermione," Harry told her, taking her hands in his and looking very serious. "I promise you I will never do that."

"You're the best," Hermione told him, rubbing her nose with one of his hands by accident, then wiping it on her pants.

"I try."

* * *

When Hermione woke the next morning, there was a collection of potions beside her bed and a note from Harry that told her which order to drink them. Additionally, there was a little note pinned to a PepperUp potion that read, 'In case Teddy has one of Those Mornings.' Hermione smiled and tucked it into her pocket.

Hermione drank it in one go once she'd checked on Teddy. He was singing nonsense words to the Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes jingle and twirling in place, wearing one of his pajama shirts on his legs, held up with the magical suspenders Ron had given him for his birthday.

* * *

Despite being incredibly nervous, Hermione did Apparate to the Pack Family stronghold after dropping Teddy off at preschool. She'd had a discussion with Harry the night before that promised to be something of a game changer, but she needed to talk it over with Arawa. She felt comforted by the fact that she had a purpose for being there other than simply to offer her help, for whatever that was worth (or to exist in a space that Remus also existed in, but Hermione was firmly placing that particular 'mission' on very Low Priority).

"There she is!" Ara said on seeing her walking in from the Apparition point. She gave Hermione a brief, intense hug and pointed to a building with visible claw marks on the door. "Inside looks even worse, and to be honest, they're so deep we're just going to forego magical repairs and replace the door and one wall. So, by any chance did you say something inspiring to Remus, yesterday?"

Hermione thought Arawa may have missed her calling as an Auror. Still, she hadn't spent time around the Weasley Twins' particular brand of distraction-based interrogation for nothing.

"So do you want to pull the pieces out with magical reinforcement, do a restore spell, and fit them back in, or are you thinking of trashing the damaged pieces and using all new lumber?" Hermione said as they walked to the building in question. "If you have the lumber for it, I'd suggest the latter. I told him I loved him, and I'd be happy to spend time getting to know each other again. Why, did he seem less surly than normal?" She didn't even make eye contact with Ara, though if the other witch had been a werewolf she'd have probably heard Hermione's heartbeat through all the activity around them.

Arawa leaned over and whispered in Hermione's ear. "I can see him _smiling_."

She looked around to see whether Remus was somewhere nearby, the hair on her arms prickling with awareness. Sure enough, he was a few structures down, moving one of the massive soil-filled barrels that she'd commented on her first time visiting. _Was that only a few days ago_?! Hermione thought to herself in surprise.

When she turned back to the task at hand, Hermione could see Ara smiling knowingly at her, and Hermione schooled her face into a determined expression and started walking toward the building that Ara had told her they would be working on. Her cheeks were burning, and there wasn't anything to do about it but get to work. She found that once she got the hang of how to stand still while propping up heavy boards, or how to stand patiently and wait until she could hand someone something they needed, that she was actually better at this than she'd thought. The workday directly after Fenrir's attack had been something she'd basically thrown herself headlong into, with no real finesse or skill, but today, Hermione was trying to be deliberate and careful. She still wouldn't ever be what Fleur had once distastefully called an 'outdoor girl,' but she felt like for once she had accomplished something tangible.

Hermione was so focused on helping carry the gouged door away from the building and into the firewood pile that she walked right past Remus without noticing him. She saw him on the way back, though, and the way he looked at her made her _very_ aware of the picture she presented. She was wearing a skin-tight black workout tank underneath a ratty old grey sweatshirt whose neckline was too wide, so no matter where she positioned it, one of her shoulders would peek out. It was one of her favorites, and somehow fixing it felt like she was insulting her Muggle roots, as though the shirt wasn't any use if she had to use magic to make it perfect. Hermione had also put on one of Teddy's favorite trousers of hers; they were skin tight and black, with bright white piping that outlined her curves. Teddy loved to call them part of her superhero suit. She'd been thinking of utility when she'd thrown them on that morning, but now, standing in front of Lupin's sweaty, admiring glance, she felt exposed and empowered, all at once.

"Hermione Granger, lifting things without a wand?" Remus questioned. The statement could have sounded like an attack, had it come from someone else, but from Remus, it actually came across as rather fond.

"You'd be shocked to see where the books I brought with me ended up," she answered back. "They're propping up the new door," she added in a stage whisper, putting a finger in front of her lips. "Don't tell 'School Hermione,' she'd never get over it."

"Which Hermione is this, then?" Remus asked, pausing in his shoveling new soil for his barrel to rest his forearms on the handle while he spoke with her.

"D'you know, I have no idea? Any suggestions?" Hermione said, her heartbeat thumping a mile a minute at the easy familiarity with which he was joking with her. It wasn't even excitement for herself and her own feelings as much as it was for him and his own connection to humanity.

"I am at a loss," Remus said, studying at her with his head tipped to the side. "I think I will have to get to know her more," he added. "For research." He smiled, and it was more open a smile than she could ever recall seeing from him. Her answering smile was as easy as breathing.

"Me and a few friends of mine were thinking about putting up a shack down the way, there," Hermione said, shrugging. "You could come, if you want."

Up until now their conversation had been mostly friendly banter, but when Hermione shrugged, the neckline of her shabby shirt slipped down over that shoulder, and Remus tilted forward almost dangerously on his shovel.

" _Soon_ ," he said, his hazel eyes intent. Hermione's heart fluttered in her chest like she imagined even Lavender Brown's would have if their places were reversed.

Hermione felt his eyes follow her every step of the way back to her workstation.

* * *

It turned out that the rest of the work didn't take very long. Once the sealing spells were finished, the witch in charge of the repairs, a bright, cheerful woman named Saffron came over to Hermione.

"I've just realized that I need a particular potion to ward against harm," she said to Hermione. She bit her lip, her grey eyes troubled. "Truth is, we kind of subvert the potion. It was originally designed to ward against werewolves; it's got nasty, nasty consequences." Hermione nodded for her to continue, as this sounded fascinating. "The concept is to inflict double, sometimes triple the harm to the werewolf, if it were to attack your house in the way that we just repaired."

"But you subvert it," Hermione said, thinking quickly about spells that amplify and reverse effects. The most well-known uses of that kind of technique were hatred potions, most often used by desperate witches and wizards to repel the people their partners were cheating on them with.

"Yes, it's rather clever, actually. Devina thought of it after Fenrir was replaced," Saffron said, nodding.

Hermione recognized the name; that was one of the werewolves who had been injured badly in Greyback's attack. She nodded at Saffron to continue.

"It's only sold in Knockturn, but that wasn't a problem until recently," Saffron was saying. "Devina is recovering, but we have a deadline to apply the reversed potion. It'll protect the werewolves inside from injuring themselves as badly during their transformation if they throw themselves against the walls," she told Hermione, swiftly removing her ponytail and re-doing it more tightly. "Anyway, Ara mentioned that you might be able to brave Knockturn Alley to get more, but I totally understand why if you decide you're not up for it. I mean, you're… who you are, and all." The witch smiled at Hermione, clearly hoping to convey that her request wasn't trying to imply that Hermione Granger would be a regular shopper in Knockturn Alley. Her 'trust me' look of complete sincerity was hilariously topped off by her Muggle hairband giving way and her blonde hair cascading down across her shoulders, causing her to mutter a heartfelt, "Oh, _shit_."

"Mine used to do that constantly," Hermione confided. She then showed Saffron a spell for reinforcing small, elastic things that she'd found in an old spellbook from the early 1900s, originally meant for garters. "As for the potion, I'd be glad to help; I'll just use an illusion charm, so no worries about ruining my reputation." She patted Saffron on her arm in encouragement. Hermione turned to retrieve her small beaded bag only to be faced with Remus, who had clearly heard at least the last sentence of their conversation. He raised an eyebrow.

"Oh! She's your family, isn't she?" Saffron said, all innocence and enthusiasm. "You should definitely go with her, you can keep anyone from looking at her sideways!"

"Where are we going?" Remus asked pleasantly; his body language was on edge, however. He came closer to stand at Hermione's left, and she could feel the warmth of his hand close to hers. Hermione looked at Saffron, hoping she would explain, but the other witch was looking at the two of them with an expression that could have been captioned, 'Awwww!'

"Devina has some supplies she usually buys for the Pack Family," Hermione began cautiously. "She's injured, and Saffron asked me if I could go instead."

"To Knockturn," Remus said flatly.

Hermione crossed her arms. "If you knew what it was referring to, why did you ask?" she said, shooting him a cross look.

"I didn't know for sure until you mentioned Devina," Remus said, "but I could tell you were being cautious, and I thought I'd find out just how anxious you were by how much you would prevaricate in your answer."

Remus looked smug, and as she watched him, she saw him catch sight of the ring she was wearing. Something in his resulting smile made her ache to re-introduce him to Teddy.

"You know me too well," Hermione said, both frustrated and elated.

"It's about time you were happy," Saffron said to Remus with an open, happy grin. She handed Hermione a piece of parchment with the shop name, potion, and quantity. "Don't worry about any detection spells, by the way. Devina says part of the fun of buying that was always how proud they were of the blasted thing, and how they just knew that werewolves couldn't bear to be within ten yards of it. Hah!"

As Hermione watched Saffron jog away, a thought occurred to her. "You don't think she assumes I'm your wife, do you?"

"How scandalous that instead, you're wearing my ring and we've never even been on a date, then," Remus said in a low voice, by all outward appearances seemingly focused on the parchment instructions he was looking at over her shoulder.

" _Is_ it your ring if you never gave it to me?" she whispered back.

"Do you think of me when you put it on?" he replied.

She didn't turn to look at him, certain he'd be able to hear her thoughts as she answered him silently: _I don't actually take it off, much_. Instead, she avoided the question. "Touché."

"Well, we can solve the date thing right now," Remus said, snatching Saffron's instructions from her and tucking them into a pocket. "Shall we?"

"We are _never_ telling Teddy," Hermione said, laughing.

"With luck, there will be many things the two of us never tell our son," Remus said, holding out his arm for her in preparation to Apparate to London.

'Our' _son. Merlin!_ she thought to herself, overcome with emotion.


	9. i'll love you for a thousand more

**ix. I'll love you for a thousand more**

Though it was possible to Apparate into the heart of Diagon Alley, Remus brought them to a location just outside of the Leaky Cauldron. Hermione was content to walk with him to their destination, but she was surprised at his lack of artifice; he looked like he was about to walk out into the open where anyone could see.

Before the two of them passed out of the shadow of the building and into the late afternoon sunlight, Hermione leaned toward him to murmur, "Are you really choosing here and now for your return to life?"

"Actually," Remus said, his eyes sparkling with mirth, "I've been under a Notice Me Not and a Disillusionment Charm since just before we Apparated. To everyone who looks, you just whispered to thin air."

Hermione took a long, calming breath before she responded, "At least you told me." She knew from experience with Teddy that appearing unaffected by such things turned the prankster into the victim. With Remus more or less at her mercy, Hermione considered taking a quick detour into Flourish and Blotts, but decided to take pity on him. She stole a glance in his direction and noted the hungry, vulnerable look on his face. He'd obviously missed at least some aspects of life as a wizard.

Even though it wasn't on the way to Knockturn, Hermione walked past the Quidditch supply shop and took a moment to consult Saffron's instructions. After a long moment, Hermione moved on slowly, waiting for Remus to catch up with her.

"You didn't need to do that," he said quietly.

"I know precious little about what you like, other than books," Hermione admitted. "This was just a guess." They crossed into Knockturn Alley and Remus retrieved his wand, casting a _Finite_ to end the Disillusionment Charm.

"It's been many years since I've flown, but it's nice to know what brooms are top notch," he said. "When Harry was a baby, they had toy brooms that were spelled to hover…" He trailed off, looking away for a moment.

Suddenly, Hermione realized how many good memories Remus possessed that had been skewed tragically by events that came afterward. A little boy getting his Hogwarts letter only to realize that he'd have to figure out how to deal with the full moon every single month he attended. The night James, Sirius, and Peter showed him their secret Animagus forms must have been a treasured memory for Remus, right up until Peter had used his form to escape culpability for what he'd done, destroying Remus and Sirius's friendship for years afterwards. Hermione imagined there must have been more she couldn't even picture, including the pain of finding an engaging and stable job at Hogwarts only to have it taken away when Snape 'let slip' about his condition.

"I can just see everyone fawning over a tiny Harry and his toy broomstick," Hermione said.

"Fawning!" Remus said, breaking into a broad smile. "Good one!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, I hadn't-" Hermione rushed to apologize for the inadvertent pun, but Remus stopped her, turning to face her and placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"Hermione, don't," he said, the smile shifting to a more serious expression. "Don't apologize for acknowledging James's existence, please? I miss my friend, I do- but I also miss being able to think and talk about him fondly without the cloud of sorrow that everyone seems to think necessary. He was a constant source of laughter, and mourning him with silence just feels..."

Hermione reached up and squeezed Remus's hand. She started to speak, but Remus looked like he had more to say, so she stopped.

"Go ahead," he said.

"I can't relate completely, but… Fred." Hermione said simply. "You haven't been there for it, but I feel like that same kind of cloud's been hanging over all of us, George especially. We just sort of stopped talking about him, trying not to remind… oh!"

Hermione covered her face with her hands, overcome with a wave of ashamed understanding. Remus gathered her up into a hug that was exactly the comfort she needed in that moment.

"It takes effort to overcome that instinct, Hermione, don't feel guilty," he said, his lips against her hair. The resonance of his voice rumbled through his chest against her cheek. She could smell the full-bodied version of the traces of scent she'd sought out so desperately in Teddy's blankets and stuffed animals when he'd first come to live with her. Remus's heartbeat was firm and steady. Everything around her was telling her she was home, right there in his arms. She felt incredibly lucky, but at the same time, she wanted to rush over to the Burrow _right now_ and apologize to George and Ron and Ginny. She could remember so clearly how she'd stopped herself from talking about Fred more than once, trying to spare their feelings.

"What's going on in there," Remus asked softly, brushing his hand across her forehead and against her hair.

"I'm trying to persuade myself that I'm not a shit friend," Hermione admitted, her voice muffled, buried as her face was against his chest.

"I wouldn't be here if you were a shit friend," Remus said, stepping back slowly so she didn't topple over. "Out of the two of us, you would definitely lose in a battle of who counts as a shit friend. So drop it, Miss Self-Recrimination," he said, his teasing tone completely glossing over his own inward insults.

"Yes sir, Mister Self-Sacrifice," Hermione retorted. "Shall we?"

Watching Remus in the dark apothecary shop was kind of a turn on for Hermione. She was used to Remus's brand of stooping apologetic deference, the way he'd done his best to be unobtrusive, yet supportive from the shadows. Even as her professor, he'd never been commanding, seeming to prefer using his authority as encouragement rather than a goad.

Not today.

His whole demeanor was like a disguise, she decided, as she watched Remus lean a hip against the counter confidently as they waited for the clerk to return with their order. She herself crossed her arms and simply took in the sight. When the squirrelly looking clerk finally did come back, Remus took the proffered potion bottle and squinted at it doubtfully before asking if it really worked as intended.

Hermione pretended they were in a hurry and practically dragged him back outside, where they essentially power walked back to the safety of Diagon Alley before collapsing up against the stone wall of the Quidditch supply shop in giggles. Remus once again impressed her when, even overcome with laughter at his own behavior, he still remembered to cast charms to obscure his identity.

"What's gotten into you?!" Hermione asked once she was able to breathe again. Remus looked over at her, shoulders still shaking with mirth.

"Joy? Peace?" he suggested.

"Goodwill towards men?" Hermione joked. "And women, of course," she added, unable to help herself.

"Just one," he said, straightening up and reaching for her hand. They walked toward the entrance to Diagon in companionable silence, though Hermione was certain he could feel her pounding heartbeat through their joined hands.

"So who were you impersonating, back there?" Hermione asked, finally breaking the silence.

"Sirius," Remus said. "He was all bluster, where the rest of us would always be trying to sneak. Hardly ever got caught, the smug bastard."

"I wish I could have known him, back then," Hermione said.

"I'm glad you didn't," Remus said, surprising her. "He was a magnet for all the girls. Sometimes -maybe even especially- the studious ones." He squeezed their joined hands.

"He was never my type, despite my spending some time with Viktor Krum," Hermione reassured him. "You're right. Knowing Sirius as the passionate caring Godfather is much better than knowing him as a passionate chaser of tail." Remus snorted.

They walked on in silence for a while, watching other witches and wizards as they went about their business. Impulsively, Hermione lifted their clasped hands to kiss the back of his.

"Thank you for coming with me," she said. Speaking about Sirius had turned her thoughts toward the impish, and before she could change her mind, she added, "Even though we didn't do anything we couldn't tell Teddy."

"Oh, I see," Remus said- and promptly turned around and walked back towards the heart of Diagon Alley, pulling Hermione along with him.

"What!" she protested, stumbling to keep up with his long strides.

"Your first mistake," Remus called out over his shoulder to her cheerfully, "was to assume that I was easily manipulated into being predictable, right after talking about Sirius Black, of all people."

Hermione tried to slow him down, but Remus was inexorable. She had one hand caught in his unshakeable grasp, the other one clutching desperately to the bag of potion from Knockturn Alley, and her bottomless beaded bag was bouncing along, suspended from her arm at the midpoint by its straps. She couldn't see where she was going (not that she didn't trust him, of course) because her hair had long since given up the ghost of propriety and was almost completely covering her face.

She only figured out where they were when she heard the door chime for Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.

"Remus!" she hissed at him. A simple glamour like the one he'd cast a few minutes ago wasn't certain to hold in a crowded space, especially not one that was likely to be populated with people who know who both of them were. "Are you sure you-" He suddenly let go of her hand, and she spun around in a half circle, dazed.

"Perfectly sure, pet," Remus said, in a voice clearly disguised by spellcasting. Hermione spent a frustrated minute fighting a skirmish with her hair, but once she'd beaten it into submission at the nape of her neck with a ribbon, she was finally able to look at Remus. Or more accurately, Remus from the neck down.

"You are entirely too clever for your own good, you do know that, right?" Hermione told him. He was wearing one of the twins' Headless Hats, which rendered the wearer's head completely invisible.

"A begrudging compliment is nearly the best kind," he told her in his pompous, disguised voice. "Now, Madam, where shall we acquire a shameful secret to keep from our offspring?"

He wasn't the only impulsive one. Hermione pulled him into the darkroom, a closet designed to test products for dim light or complete darkness. She then cast a _very_ secure locking charm, an expert _Muffliato_ , and _Finite Incantatum_ , directed at Remus, whose disguises melted away in the dim light of her _Lumos_. It wasn't the most private room ever, but George would forgive her. Probably.

"You!" she launched herself at Remus, ripping the Headless Hat from his head. " _Our_ son- you have _no_ idea how much I love when you say things like that! I have decided Sirius is a solid role model for confidence," she declared, pushing him gently but firmly against the wall behind the door. "So listen up: I love you, Remus. I want to be a family: you, me, and Teddy. If, to do that, I have to make a lifetime supply of _Felix Felicis_ to keep anything bad from ever happening to you again, or if we have to move to a field outside the Pack Family, even if I have to find a Time Turner to age myself up, whatever it is, I'll do it."

He stared down at her, eyes wide.

"Nothing," he managed to say, softly. Hermione's heart sank.

"There's nothing I can-"

"No, no, you sweet, brave, unbelievable woman," Remus said, cupping her face in his hands. He shook his head and brushed away one of the tears that had escaped from her eyes. "You don't have to do anything. There's nothing left to do, you've done all of it! You've become a mother to my son. You've chased me out of hiding. You've used your precious books as a doorstop and gotten covered in sweat and sawdust to rebuild my home with your bare hands. You've shown me nothing but patience, joy, and hope- _you're wearing my ring!_ What else is there to do but give in to you, Hermione?" Remus said, thick emotion choking his voice even as his eyes sparkled with happiness. "I yield," he said, spreading his hands out at his sides in obvious surrender.

"Oh!" she said, pulling him close in a hug, completely overcome with emotion. For the second time that day, Hermione buried her face in his chest. She was furious with herself. How was she supposed to kiss him when she couldn't stop sobbing? In happiness, no less!

"Let it out, sweetheart," Remus said when she started hiccupping. He rubbed her back in wide, soothing circles.

"But I want to kiss you!" she said, nearly pounding her fists on his chest in frustration. To her surprise, he started laughing. "That's not helping, Remus John Lupin!" she said, before starting to giggle herself.

"In the past two minutes you've been laughing and crying, angry and joyful," Remus said, taking her hands in his and pulling them up to twine around his neck. He brushed her hair away from her face so tenderly that she nearly gasped, her heart was so full. "There's time enough for 'ravished.'" He leaned closer, nipping at her lips before pulling back a tiny bit to speak again. "I'm not going anywhere, not without you."

When she'd kissed him before, she'd been afraid he'd pull away, terrified that she'd push him away by showing him the depth of her feelings for him. Now, he'd made it clear that wasn't possible. Hermione buried her fingers in his hair, stretching up to get as close to him as she could as their lips met. It was a slow, intense kiss, full of shared breaths and dueling tongues. They were so caught up in each other that they both missed the door opening. The only thing that kept George Weasley from seeing who was snogging was the fact that she'd let her wand, still casting _Lumos_ , fall to the floor.

"I hope whatever product you're testing meets with your approval," George said, his voice startling Hermione enough that she fell sideways into the door. As it slammed shut with her weight against it, Hermione heard George comment again. "I trust you're expert with your _Scourgify!_!"

"I am so sorry, Hermione! I was so surprised at the sound of the door that I completely let go of you," Remus said, lifting her from her slump against the door and gently feeling for injuries. "I have a long way to go before I rid myself of that particular brand of paranoia, I'm afraid."

"I'm perfectly fine, Remus," Hermione said, kissing him on the cheek. "I don't want a sanitized version of you, you know. I want _you_."

There was a brisk knock on the door. "There's a strict ten minute time limit for _testing the merchandise_ , if you catch my drift!"

Hermione grinned at Remus and put a finger in front of her lips. She'd forgotten the limitations of certain locking spells when cast by a person who didn't own the property. Her _Muffliato_ , though, was still in full force. She cast the spell to end it, and called out to her friend.

"Thanks George! Looks like everything fits perfectly, I'll have you send me an invoice!" To Remus, she whispered, "Ready to Apparate?" He nodded.

" _Hermione?!_ "

She could hear George fumbling at the doorknob, but knew that by the time he got it open he'd find a completely tidy room with no trace of them but the echoing _pop_ of Apparition.


	10. one step closer

**x. one step closer**

When Hermione walked back into her cottage that evening, it was with some seriously mixed emotions. She didn't regret what she'd said to Remus -far from it!- but she hadn't intended to say all of it so _soon!_ She'd fallen into the same trap that she'd assumed he had experienced before their first kiss: responding enthusiastically to someone you care for and respect greatly, possibly even love, standing in front of you baring their soul. Her impulsive heart was warring with her rational mind yet again. Were his feelings genuine? Had she prompted them into existence unnaturally? Was she doomed to find herself abandoned and miserable in some months' time, as Tonks had been?

"Um." Harry said.

Hermione looked up to see her friend standing in front of her, a serious look of concern in his green eyes. The look prompted a question.

"Have I been standing here for long?"

"Playing statue!" Teddy cheered, popping up from behind a chair in the living room. Hermione found herself completely overcome with love for the little boy _and_ his father, and immediately knelt to throw her arms out for the younger Lupin. Teddy, being Teddy, obliged her.

"Emotional day, I gather," Harry observed.

"Very. But it seems it wouldn't be a day that ended in 'Y' if I didn't throw myself at his father at every opportunity," Hermione said, without thinking.

"Papa?" Teddy said, looking hopeful.

Hermione felt a stab of deep regret for her thoughtlessness. She felt as though she were made of glass, one of those amazingly resilient Prince Rupert Drops whose strength was legendary at one end but fragility incarnate at the other. Here, she'd swung the hammer herself, at her own weakest point.

Hermione had done her best to keep Remus and Tonks present in Teddy's memory, even though those memories had to come second-hand. She told stories of the couple, and their pictures littered the house. Teddy was too young to realize that most of them didn't feature 'Mummy.' Tonks and Lupin were Mama and Papa to her son, but it seemed that, despite her best efforts, Hermione had not managed to keep her desperate hope that she would find Remus from coloring the picture she'd painted of him for Teddy. Now, he stood in front of her, his little face shining with expectation.

"Yes, my Teddy, I have found your Papa," Hermione said, after a brief exchange of glances at Harry, who nodded. "But he has been very sick, and very sad. We must all be ready for each other, mustn't we?"

To her surprise, Teddy's face fell.

"My room a MESS!" he said, covering his face in a gesture Hermione recognized as wholly her own.

Harry's laughter practically bounced off of the walls at that, and Hermione briefly considered tossing a stinging spell at him, in revenge.

After they'd had their supper, Harry had helped Hermione and Teddy clean up his room a bit before bed. Harry left her to read Teddy his bedtime book. When she was done reading, she tucked him in with a kiss and shut the door, warding it with her special combination of spells that warned her if he needed her but kept any outside noise from disturbing him. She walked out into the cheerful light of her living room to find Ginny there with Harry.

"Harry says you need to be talked down from something," Ginny said without preamble.

"That's not _quite_ what I said," Harry protested, but Ginny waved him off.

"It's what you meant, though," she said. "You're just trying to be diplomatic, and Hermione and I both love you anyway, so stuff it."

"More like I need to be talked back up out the hole I've dug for myself, AGAIN," Hermione said. She sat down next to Ginny and leaned over to rest her forehead on the other woman's shoulder. "It's just that everything is ridiculously full of sunshine and 'It Will All Work Out In The End'-ness when I'm with him!"

"True love is like that," Harry said.

"I can feel the ooey gooey lovey dovey look from here with my eyes closed, you know that, right?" Hermione told him.

"In all seriousness, Hermione, I do get it," Harry said, and the sincerity in his voice gave Hermione the courage to sit up and look at him. "You spent so much energy on confidence, mostly for us. You didn't want us all to think you just hoped you'd find him. You needed us to see that you _knew_ you would. Watching you tackle a problem has always been something fascinating, I don't think Ron or I ever managed to tell you that, have we?"

Hermione shook her head.

"It's like you plan it all out, the research, and the effort, and the persuasion, and the magic, but this time it's like… it was so important to you, you forgot one of the things you're usually so good at," Harry said.

"The aftermath," Ginny cut in.

"Well, shit," Hermione said, then giggled almost helplessly.

"You know, we can help with that part," Ginny said.

"Particularly since you took care of the hard part," Harry added.

"I don't know, I feel like the part where a man comes back from the dead ought to be the hard bit, don't you?" Hermione said, catching herself just as she was about to cover her face with her hands in regret in the same way Teddy had, an hour earlier.

"Oh!" Ginny said, and Hermione looked over at her in surprise to see that she'd covered her mouth with her hand as though realizing something profound.

"Ginny?"

"Oh, that's just… well. 'Lovey dovey' romantic, quite frankly," Ginny said. Hermione shot a look at Harry and found him making an equally confused face. "All right, I'll explain, you two can stop it with your matching Gilderoy Lockhart in St. Mungo's expressions," Ginny exclaimed, standing up and putting her hands on her hips. "You've switched allegiance," Ginny said, gesturing at Hermione. "You're so wholly on his side of the divide that you've gone and forgotten that for the most part, we're all just completely relieved and delighted to find him!"

"She's right," Harry said, looking up at Ginny. "Coming back to us might have seemed like the hard part, if you're Lupin, but not from where I'm sitting."

"And can you picture Teddy being anything but perfectly, genuinely happy that he has his Papa back?" Ginny pointed out.

"No," Hermione said, her smile bubbling up from a well of pure motherly pride. "He's basically goodness personified." Then, she frowned. "That's not really the problem I'm most worried about. And being worried about it at all is not really the actions of a loving person in the first place!" Hermione shook her head and sighed.

"Before you say anything more," Harry said, coming over and sitting on the arm of the couch beside Hermione. "Answer this: would you be ashamed of telling Remus the truth of your worries? Because if you have to choose between telling him the truth and being evasive, at least with the truth, you keep your self respect."

Hermione thought about this for a long moment. "Ashamed? A little," she answered, honestly.

"Then reconcile yourself to that first," Ginny said. "Or," she added quickly with a grin that told Hermione she knew that what she was saying wasn't the most helpful advice she'd ever given, "tell him you feel guilty for worrying about it on top of being worried. It might help him realize he's not the only one who's a bit of a mess in the relationship!"

Hermione took their suggestions gracefully, and then kicked her two friends out.

Lovingly, of course.

"So, hi. Hello."

This was the way Hermione greeted Remus the next morning, after a night fretting about the best way to bring up that she needed to bring up concerns, and a morning of persuading Molly Weasley that she really did need another nearly full day without Teddy so soon. She'd ended up promising the other woman all manner of things in a desperate attempt to ward off any suspicions that there was something new on the horizon, only for Teddy to casually drop the news that he might have a Papa again. Surprisingly, Molly had taken this in stride, and characteristically told Hermione she'd be holding her to the list of promises despite the fact that she'd clearly only promised those things in a bid to avoid spilling the beans about Remus.

It was probably a good thing that all the Time Turners had been destroyed years ago, because this was shaping up to be the sort of day that needed starting over quite badly.

"Good morning, Ms Worrywart Granger. I was hoping to see Hermione today, is she very ill?" Remus teased. She'd found him on his knees beside one of the largest barrels of flowers, a flat of flowers beside him, half of which he'd already planted.

"Dreadfully so," Hermione admitted, allowing his light mood to lift her own, if only slightly.

"Well, pull up a log, and we'll talk around it as long as you have the need, all right?"

His tone of voice was so gentle that Hermione was struck with a strong feeling of guilt over doubting his sincerity. Harry was right. Truth was every bit as hard to face as deception could be, but twice as liberating.

Remus reached out and grabbed a wide, flat log from a pile that was waiting to be placed as edging around walkways at the encampment. When Hermione stepped over to it to sit, she tried to shift it out from atop a flower petal that had fallen from the plants waiting to be placed, but it was far too heavy for her to budge. Lupin had moved it so effortlessly that, when its true weight became clear to her, Hermione felt herself blushing. Apparently, she found his physical strength to be every bit as attractive as his strength of character.

Except, of course, that she was here to tell him she had doubts about his character. Hermione shut her eyes and counted to five, opening them again to find that Remus was watching her, a barely perceptible smile ghosting around his lips.

"What?" Hermione was compelled to ask, after what felt like an eternity without any comment from him.

"Your face said a lot, just there," he told her. "It was very endearing."

"A good deal of that was my finding your ability to move heavy things as though they were spelled Featherweight endearing," Hermione told him, the heat of her blush returning with the admission.

"Good to know," Remus said. She told herself she was just imagining that his voice became lower and more raspy just then. She could feel herself getting distracted, moving inexorably toward the feeling of bliss she'd described to Ginny and Harry the night before, and in response, Hermione forced herself to focus on her task at hand. It was time to be honest with him. Remus had started digging a shallow space in the dirt to place the next flower, and when he brushed away a fluttering moth that had nearly landed on his forehead, the dirt on his hand left a shadow on his brow.

There! Distracted again!

"I have broken just about every rule I gave myself in regards to you!" Hermione blurted out in exasperation.

"Why am I completely unsurprised that you have rules about me in the first place?" Remus said, his voice distorted by the choked laughter that accompanied the comment.

"That was not meant to come out in such a… plaintive tone of voice," Hermione said meekly.

"I can definitely see you chastising me about how easily I persuade you to break rules," Remus said.

 _How on Earth had I missed this playful side of him?!_ Hermione wondered in amazement. All at once, a glorious, humbling answer popped into her head: 'Because he is _happy_ , now.'

"There you go again," Remus said, his voice closer than before. She looked back over to him, finding that he'd shifted around the barrel to kneel beside her. "What was it this time, if I can ask?"

Hermione didn't answer, deciding instead to admit her weakness to him in the intimacy of the conversation.

"I meant to wait, you know," she said quietly. "Throwing myself at you again was completely against the plan."

"Fretted about that last night, did you?" he asked astutely. Hermione nodded. "I lay awake last night fretting too," Remus said, surprising her. "There you were, telling me how you felt, and all I could manage was to act like a besieged castle. I realized last night in utter horror that you'd been there in the hospital, with Bill Weasley and the Order, when Dora begged me to…" his voice trailed off and he looked down at his hands, picking at the clumps of rich earth that clung to them. Then, Remus looked up, mesmerizing her with the intense look in his eyes. "You haven't worn me down, not about this. You are a completely different person, and I love you in a completely different way, I need you to know that."

The matter of fact way that he told her this took her breath away. It was completely different from the way he'd looked at her in the storeroom. Then, it had been as though he'd discovered a new secret, telling her about Sirius and his motorbike and the world shifting on its axis. Now, it was as though he was sharing a part of his personality. Remus Lupin enjoys watching Quidditch, reading a good book, and loving Hermione Granger.

Overcome, Hermione told him the first thing that came to mind.

"I don't deserve you," she said, reaching out for him and hugging him close. She could feel him draw in a large breath, knew that it was to vehemently rebut the statement she'd just made, and so she rushed to explain herself. "I was determined to find you, so determined, in fact, that you became a one-dimensional being in my mind. 'Missing: one Remus Lupin, Werewolf Schoolteacher,' as though the amazing richness of what makes you who you are could just be buried in a file folder full of possible hiding places!" She brushed her fingers through his hair and smoothed her hands along his back, tightening her grip to hug him before letting him move back to look at her as she spoke again. "When I was a girl I used to read these books, they were by a Muggle magazine company. They were compilations of books, and they'd edit each to be more streamlined, easier to read. Reader's Digest Condensed Books, they were called. I didn't really know what condensed meant in that context until I went to Hogwarts. That first summer, between First and Second years, realizing what it meant was like a precious gift, something to ease the time until I could be around magic again."

Hermione shifted forward onto her knees and started helping Remus plant the last few flowers as she elaborated.

"I went through and made a list," she said.

"Of course you did," he interrupted with a laugh, and she made a face at him.

"All my most favorite books from the Condensed Books went on the list, and one by one I went through and read every unabridged book. Each of them had extra dialogue and plot points and characterizations that had been deliberately left out. It was _glorious._ The library was completely sick of the sight of me by September."

"So what was the Reader's Digest version of Remus Lupin?" he asked her.

"A wonderful teacher," Hermione told him, handing him the last flower to plant. "Dedicated, patient, thorough. Intelligent and perceptive." She could see his cheeks redden ever so slightly. "Then later, as brave as anyone I'd ever met."

"Clearly you'd developed a blinding crush on me by then," Remus said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and brushing the dirt off of his hands. He offered it to her, and she shot him an amused smile, taking out her wand and casting a cleansing charm on both pairs of their hands in turn. Then, she took the handkerchief and gently wiped away the dirt from his face with it.

"'Love may be blind but it doesn't create falsehoods out of whole cloth,' as my Muggle grandmother would say," Hermione said. "You are not allowed to sell yourself short."

"Duly noted," Remus said gravely.

"Shall I tell you some of the new characterizations I'm discovering?"

"I feel certain your grandmother had one or two sayings about conceit and flattery," Remus said, standing with a gracefulness that Hermione felt seriously jealous of.

"Fine, I'll just tell you one of them: playfulness."

"Ahh," Remus said, helping her up. "That's always been there."

"I mean, I _knew_ that, given the whole Marauder thing," Hermione started to say, before Remus interrupted her with a lifted hand.

"If you ever get a chance to have a casual conversation with Minerva, ask her about the Professor's Library and whether she ever figured out the culprit from her anonymous feud, that year."

"You were _pranking_ Professor McGonagall?!"

"Sirius used to call her Minnie."

Hermione just stared at him.

"So, sweetheart, I assume you have a list of what to fuss at me about. What's the next item on it?" Remus said, the attempt at putting her back on track completely and utterly derailed by his next action. He hefted three of the waiting logs and started off toward a section of path that was in need of them. He was twelve paces away before she'd realized she'd stopped, and started after him.

"Teddy, actually," Hermione said, remembering the list she'd made that morning.

It was Remus's turn to stop dead in his tracks.

"You should know it's a mixture of utter trust in your judgment and the sheer weight of guilt that I haven't asked about him," Remus said quietly.

"I can appreciate how trauma and the very short time you were able to spend with him could cause the very thought of Teddy to be painful, Remus," she told him, coming up behind him to rest her hand on his shoulder.

"The look on your face when you told me about him, when Fenrir-"

"I was so horrified at my mistake! Anyone could have guessed my relationship to him after hearing that," Hermione admitted.

"Lunch soon, you two!" Arawa called out, coming toward them with a broad smile. "Let me know if you'll need a quarantine area around you in the hall- it's been a devil to keep everyone out of your way this morning as it is!"

The curse word that came out of Remus's mouth at that definitely went on the list of new characterizations. He set about placing his logs, but Ara wasn't deterred.

"Don't look so stricken. If it wasn't important, I wouldn't have bothered, and you know it," Ara told them. "You've only been here a little over an hour anyway, Hermione. I'm just teasing, mostly."

"We tease because we care!" Brianna hollered out, walking past them with a wheelbarrow full of sod.

Remus finished with his log, and, without turning toward her, he said, "Would you… tell me more about him?"

"I'm tempted to pretend you meant yourself," Hermione teased, "but I know you meant Teddy." She turned and started back toward the staging ground she'd found him working at earlier, hoping he'd follow her when he felt able to. She was gratified when she came up on the flower barrel and felt his warmth as he stopped close behind her.

"Go on," he said.

"Teddy is…" Hermione stopped and took a deep breath, turning to smile shyly at Remus. "I want to say simply, 'he's Teddy.' He's unlike anyone else I know, but as an only child, I'm not in a position to say whether that's because he's a singular person, or because he's not yet three. He likes to draw, and is apparently rather good in that you can mostly tell what it is that he's drawing, which, I should tell you, tends to feature many stick figures with red hair or black spiky hair."

The haunted look in Remus's eyes was chased away more than a little bit by that, she could tell.

"He loves to be read to," Hermione continued, acknowledging Remus's murmur of 'Of course he does!' with a nod. "He adores picture books, especially the ones with pictures of Mama and Papa."

Hermione was completely unprepared for Remus's reaction to this, as he moved to stand in front of her, grabbing at her upper arms in a motion she could tell was motivated by pure shock.

"You- He… you told -?"

"Deep breaths, dear one," Hermione said, turning her hands up and cupping them against his elbows. Remus obeyed her, tipping his forehead over against hers, and gentling his grip on her without letting go completely.

"He knows about me?" he said, after a long moment. Hermione answered in a slow, measured voice, ignoring her impulse to say something dismissive of his sense of wonder.

"Yes, he knows about you," she said, reaching up to kiss him lightly. "I think if you look at your memories of people like Molly and Harry and the rest of us, you'll recognize that none of us would voluntarily keep a little boy from learning about his well loved father. And you are, you know." She stepped back, far enough to force eye contact, but not far enough to imply anger. "Everyone wants the best for you, whether it's to be fed to within an inch of your life-"

"That'll be Molly," Remus said, wincing slightly.

"-punished by being a product tester for the rest of your born days," Hermione continued, pausing for comment.

"George. I _missed_ George," Remus said, looking surprised at the admission.

"And most importantly, being a _much_ sturdier Jungle Gym than Uncle Harry."

"Oh?"

"According to Teddy, Harry squirms too much, which might just be the most egregious incident of the pot calling the kettle black I've ever encountered," Hermione said, laughing. "That's what he told me this morning, Remus. That he wants to be able to touch you, instead of just looking."

"I…" Remus looked wrecked.

"-deserve to be happy and loved," Hermione prompted, reaching down and grabbing his hand. She guided him to a place between two nearby buildings, loathe to share the emotional moment with anyone else and knowing that Remus wasn't someone who enjoyed public spectacle.

"I must have found my match, Hermione Granger," Remus said, leaning against the building opposite her. His eyes were still glossy with tears, but rather than sorrowful, they were bright and warm. "I've come to the point at which I'm willing to be persuaded."


	11. how to be brave

**xi. how to be brave**

(Remus's POV)

When Fenrir dragged him away after the battle at Hogwarts, Remus had been secretly pleased. He'd been hit with a stunner and a slicing jinx, and the only thing that had kept him from dying outright had been his werewolf healing abilities. Death was preferable to facing his abject failures: he'd lost sight of Harry, Order members and _children_ were dropping like flies, he hadn't protected Dora, and worst of all, he'd left his son without a parent. The latter realization felt like a mental slicing jinx, and Remus had given in to oblivion. He'd be dead soon, and whatever Fenrir did to him, he'd deserve it.

He hadn't died.

The first time he'd woken, with his body in bandages and the roof of a cave over his head, Remus had slammed his head back onto the rock underneath him and knocked himself back out.

The next few times, he'd pretended to be in a catatonic state, his muscles too rigid to allow therapeutic treatment. He was certain that if he put up enough fight, they'd give up on him as not worth the effort.

He hadn't died.

After months of being dragged about, wrapped in bandages and being force-fed lumpy bread and watery vegetable soup, Remus woke to an actual wooden board ceiling above his head. He'd felt itchy all over, and his arms were loosely bound to the cot, so he wasn't able to scratch. He groaned in frustration, and a short, black-haired woman came over to him.

"Are you ready to accept you're alive?" she'd asked him bluntly. "If you were going to die, you'd have done it by now. It's time to do something productive."

Remus had had no answer for her, but after a struggle to find a biting, off-putting phrase that would lead her to dumping him off in a ditch somewhere, he'd found that he couldn't bring himself to say it. So, as he felt he'd always done, he gave up trying.

"All right," he told her.

They'd put him to work, this ragtag group that crept around the edges of Fenrir's pack. Fenrir himself tolerated them, probably because he knew he could threaten their lives to keep their werewolf family members in line. The black haired witch was inexplicably nice to him, and he sometimes had to remind himself of his own incompetence and worthlessness, to keep himself from warming to her. He was a drone, he told himself nightly. A werewolf drone. Not a man.

He still hadn't died.

The change in atmosphere had come after 16 months. Fenrir had reacted poorly to a local family's attempts to keep them from setting up a temporary den complex on their farm. The farmer's grown son had cast some pretty vicious wards around the barn, and Fenrir had lost his temper and attacked him. He'd dragged the man's body back like a trophy... but when he had healed from his injuries, Carr hadn't become yet another broken thrall. Carr had led a revolution.

Remus was one of the first to offer help, mostly because he didn't have anything to lose, and, he knew, nothing to gain. He'd been in the very front, and he had done everything he could to keep Fenrir's attention on _him_ , not Carr. Fenrir had gotten sloppy, assuming - _knowing_ \- that Remus had no sense of self-preservation. They'd fought, and Remus had allowed every injury to drive his own bloodlust. In the end, Fenrir had been distracted and injured when Carr had made his move to challenge him.

Remus hadn't died, though.

The black-haired, feisty witch who had goaded him to live in the first place was named Arawa, and she and her brother Samiel clearly felt like Remus was their biggest challenge. He watched them pour kindness and life into each broken, miserable werewolf, whether they had family that came to their pack camp or not. He didn't feel like there was any space inside him left that was soft enough to accept kindness and life, but he was willing to work hard and spend his life force to help them.

Remus had dreaded the day that they'd run out of lost causes to find, because he liked them. They were good people, the kind he'd have sought out and propped up back when life had meant something to him, back when he felt he had social capital to spend on good causes. Carr moved back to his farmhouse and family, and a score of lost causes had either established a firm foothold in their Pack Family or gone back to their own by the time Arawa stood in his doorway, tutting at him over the injuries he'd earned himself from their latest building project.

"Don't," he'd said, curtly.

"It's past your turn, you know," Arawa had told him.

"I don't want a turn. I am nobody, and there is nobody to be hurt by that fact."

"I've come to realize that it's the ones who have lost the most who come to see themselves as the most worthless, Remus. Your mistake was spending the last two years trying your best to convince me that you are the _pinnacle_ of worthlessness."

For the first time in those two years, Remus had felt a crack in his iron facade, in hearing those words. He'd argued with Arawa for a full two months after that, and in those arguments, he'd accidentally let slip about Teddy, his dead wife, and his lost life. The worst part was, as he sat in his hand-made bed, at the end of July, he finally felt regret over what he'd left behind. He'd finally let himself cry, and the violence of it was excruciating. He'd felt like he could drown in the volume of tears, that the pain of actually _living_ was far worse than the hollow emptiness he'd chased with gusto for so long.

He hadn't died, that night.

The next night, Remus had lain still and awake yet again, this time trying to map out who was left of the pack family Albus Dumbledore had formed. Harry was a giant, wrenching question mark, but Remus hadn't seen his body, so there was hope, still. He didn't dare expect that the whole Weasley family had been spared, but trying to imagine which or how many had been hurt or slain in the battle was a study in futility, so he mentally set them aside. Kingsley was Minister of Magic, he thought he'd read recently, so that was a bright spot of hope, as well. He couldn't imagine what would have possibly stopped Minerva, and he lay in bed and whispered the names of the other Order members, picturing their faces. That left a single name, one so wrapped up in guilt and temptation that he'd banished her name and face from his mind even before the battle had begun.

Hermione.

He'd realized he had feelings for her around the same time Tonks had started to spend time with him. There was a painful sort of dichotomy there, and he'd thrown himself headlong into looking for Dora's virtues as a kind of defense mechanism against the way he felt about Hermione. Then, as his feelings for Dora grew, he'd realized in horror that he couldn't be sure they were completely genuine. Was he falling for Dora because he'd persuaded himself to see her as a substitute, or because he really liked her? Had he cross-pollinated his attraction?

As penance, Remus had devoted himself to Dora, opening himself up to her in a way he'd never thought he'd ever allow. He found that he _did_ love her for herself, though after they got married, he came to understand that they weren't as compatible as she wanted him to believe they were. They'd fought often. Remus, always eager to punish himself for his own failings, allowed himself to dwell on the differences between Tonks and Hermione, and when Tonks had told him she was pregnant, he'd been so angry with her. He'd very nearly told her, when she'd demanded to know why he seemed so distant, that _Hermione_ would never had gotten pregnant to try to fix things with a man whose life was as much of a mess as theirs was.

Dora would probably have killed him, if he had. He'd have deserved it.

For Remus, in that moment after he'd been told he would be a father, Hermione had stood for everything in him that was still worth saving. His feelings for her were the only ones left that had virtue. His child could very well be a monster, conceived by a man who fought his own monstrous nature. Dora had tricked him, he'd told himself, tricked him into loving her, tricked him into marriage when he knew he wasn't worthy, tricked him into becoming a father when he was the last wizard on Earth who deserved the title. He'd stormed out, keeping to himself the last, most painful thing he could have told his wife in their horrible argument. That he might be in love with someone else.

He'd gone to Hermione. And she'd told him that he was selfish (he was), he was abandoning his responsibilities (he was), and he was too much of a mess to be of any use (he was). She'd told him that she wasn't going to let him throw his life away on a quest to be useful, when he was far more useful in the ways he'd tried to run away from to come there.

He'd wanted to die. He'd _offered_ to die. And he'd been rejected.

So, Remus had gone home. He'd re-invested in his life, but the resentment and self-loathing had festered, and they'd manifested themselves as a death wish so strong that he'd allowed himself to _be_ dead for everyone that might have survived the battle that had killed his Dora.

Lying there in his bed at the end of July, two years after he'd given up on his life and his friends, Remus Lupin made the decision to allow himself to hurt again, without allowing that pain to fester into a death wish. The next morning, he told Arawa that he was giving her his permission to look for his family. If in the process of finding Teddy and earning a place in his son's life again, Remus came across Hermione... well, that was up to fate.

On Teddy's Third Birthday

"Mummy! Papa! Mummy, Mummy!"

There was a tentative knock on the door, then a more erratic, louder series of knocks, before the doorknob started to rattle.

"The _one_ night you didn't ward the door!" Remus whispered to Hermione, under the covers.

" _Muffliato!_ " Hermione cast the spell with an expert hand, her voice barely above a whisper. "It's his birthday! Besides, it doesn't stop him from coming in, it just fogs over the room from his perspective for a full minute _after_ he comes in," Hermione reminded him. "It's in Molly's essential parenting book."

The door burst open, and there was dead silence.

"What-" Remus started to move, but Hermione reached over from where she was curled up beside him and placed a heavy hand on his chest.

"Don't show weakness. He used to do this a lot, just after he turned two," she explained. "We're supposed to try not to be noticed. It's a lot like avoiding looking at the teacher when they're looking for someone to answer a question."

"How would you know how to do _that_?" Remus snickered, stroking her hand where it still lay on his chest.

"Papa!" Teddy crowed, clearly seeing movement on his father's side of the bed.

"Told you not to move. Now you're in for it!" Hermione said, casting _Finito_ on the silencing charm and sliding away, off the bed.

"What am I in for?" Remus asked, reaching out toward her as the bed shook. He couldn't tell if the shaking was from his wife getting up out of the bed, or his son climbing up _onto_ the bed.

"He's a little boy," he protested to Hermione. "He's not a-"

"JUMP!" Teddy crowed, and a second later, he flopped right onto Remus's stomach with unerring accuracy.

"OOOF," Remus said, his cry of pain (mostly) embellished for Teddy's amusement. He could hear Hermione moving pans about in the kitchen and hoped that meant she would make them Teddy's favorite pancakes for breakfast- the ones with chocolate chips.

"You dead, Papa?" Teddy asked, pulling down the edge of the blanket to peek at him.

"No, just mortally wounded," Remus told him.

"What's 'mortal?'"

"Well, Teddy, it means you're alive," Remus said. After hugging his son tight and wishing him a happy birthday, he felt a little overcome with emotion. What a change from a year ago, and all of it thanks to allowing himself to believe he could have a life worth living for.

"My birthday!" Teddy said, squirming in the hug. "That means presents?"

Remus nodded and scooped Teddy and the great mass of blankets up as he stood. He felt a little twinge of self-satisfaction at the way Hermione would probably look at him when she saw how much he was carrying. He walked through the hall and into the living room, hovering in the doorway to the kitchen for a few seconds before depositing the mass of child and bedclothes in front of a pile of wrapped birthday presents.

"Don't worry, I saw you," Hermione said when he came over to her. The look she gave him was heated. "I need your help, though. My hands are full and I'm pretty sure I've got chocolate on my-"

Remus kissed her and then nibbled the smudge of chocolate off of her chin. After making a satisfied sound, Hermione cupped his face in her slightly floured hands.

"Hanging in there?" she asked. He both loved and hated the way she was so perceptive.

"I'll manage. The food's way better than the last place," he said, his voice not quite as nonchalant as he tried to make it. Then, because he knew her concern was rooted in her love for him, he added, "Thank you."

"You're welcome, my love," she said, reaching up to kiss him gently. "But don't thank me until after Teddy opens his presents. There's at least one present you will wish I'd cleared with you, first."

"You'll just have to make it up to me later," Remus suggested.

"Mummy and Papa happy," Teddy declared from the doorway. "Best present."

Remus felt an almost unbearable wave of love and happiness on hearing that, and impulsively, he lifted Hermione up by her waist and spun them in a circle.

"The pancakes!" she shrieked, giggling. "They'll burn!"

"They're more authentic that way, anyway," Remus told her.


End file.
